


And I Have Loved You Wild

by dollylux



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Background Het, F/F, Lawyer Natasha, Minor Character Death, Recreational Drug Use, Semi-Public Sex, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 18:27:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 43,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7372717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollylux/pseuds/dollylux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the life Natasha has so carefully built is destroyed in a single day, there's only one place she can go: home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> well, hello again! yes, another AU so soon. :) this story is based on a novel i planned on writing years ago. the original plan was for it to be two guys, but i kept coming back to placing wanda and natasha in these roles instead, so here we are. if i can finish this thing, this very well may be the most quintessentially _me_ story i've ever written.  <3
> 
> this story, which i will hopefully one day revise into the novel it was intended to be, is dedicated to cameron crowe. he is the reason for its existence.
> 
> (this chapter contains mentions of a drugged rape and a brief scene of het sex [which doesn't involve natasha or wanda].)

“Has the jury reached a verdict?”

“We have, Your Honor.”

Natasha sits square in the middle of her seat and stares straight ahead at nothing, at no one at all. Her face is blank, carefully so, but anyone who could see the way her hands are clutching each other under the table would know: all that stoicism is a complete lie.

There are faint sounds around the courtroom, a quiet cough, the vibration of a phone, the rustle of papers from her right. She doesn’t dare to blink.

“In the case of the People versus Harry Osborn, on one count of sexual assault, how do you find?”

“We find the defendant guilty.”

A gasp goes up around the room, a sharp rise of voices that falls silent again almost immediately. The judge is already looking around with a fierce glint in his eye, his gavel raised.

“On one count of the use of an illegal drug as a tool for sexual assault, how do you find?”

Natasha glances over this time, her shoulders beauty queen straight. Watches the head juror’s thin, lined mouth as she delivers the next verdict.

“Guilty.”

“On one count possession of an illegal drug with intent to use it in commission of a violent crime, how do you find?”

“Guilty, Your Honor.”

The word flashes through her mind like it’s her own sentence, like it’s her fate that’s been decided. Harry hasn’t moved beside her, hasn’t looked over at her even once, but she can feel his impotent fury, how indignant he is, how childishly _mad_ he is that, for once, he didn’t get his way.

Natasha doesn’t react when Harry starts to cry as he’s sentenced to ten years in prison without the possibility of parole. She doesn’t flinch when his sobs echo around the packed, pin-drop quiet room, doesn’t blink when the judge turns a sanctimonious sneer her way, probably for selling her soul by taking on this case at all, never mind that it was forced on her, that she wasn’t given a choice in the matter, that it’s not _her_ millions that were put into this case to try and help what could potentially be a serial rapist get out of the one mess he finally got caught in.

It’s the biggest case of her career, and she lost.

Her knees shake when she makes her way to her feet as the judge leaves the courtroom, but she can’t ignore the one emotion prevailing over all others: relief.

 

“Romanoff, my office. Now.”

Natasha stops halfway between her office and Fury’s, a plastic container holding an overpriced Caesar salad clutched in her French manicured hand. The bone in her jaw protrudes against her cheek as she grits her teeth.

“Sir, it’s almost three. I haven’t even had lunch yet. Just give me--”

 _Now_ , Romanoff!”

“For _fuck’s_ sake,” she hisses, tightening her hand on the salad container so hard that it squeaks. Four inch heels carry her into Fury’s expansive office overlooking downtown Los Angeles, and she’s surprised to see Norman Osborn sitting in the thousand dollar imported leather chair across from Fury’s desk.

“Close the door,” Fury barks.

She closes the door quietly even though she wants to slam it, wants to sit on the edge of Fury’s desk and crunch her romaine lettuce while she’s lectured, but she hasn’t spent a lifetime perfecting her poker face to lose her cool now.

“Sit down.” Fury is pointing to the chair beside Osborn, the rat-faced, spineless fuck of a man who created a rapist of a son because he’s spent every day of Harry’s life plucking him neatly out of every mistake he’s ever made. Natasha sits down on the very edge of the seat and turns a carefully cool gaze to Fury, not bothering to address Osborn who is boring holes in her with his eyes, who is so silently raging only feet away from her that she looks forward to hearing blood vessels pop.

“I didn’t think you had it in you, Natasha,” Fury starts, his voice almost light, conversational. “I didn’t know you possessed the ability to fuck something up _so_ thoroughly. It was exceptional. Worthy of a theatrical release. You should get your own movie.”

Natasha takes three slow, deep breaths, green eyes placid but not once looking away from Fury.

“Mama always told me if I was gonna do something, to commit,” she replies.

“Do you think this is funny?!” Osborn finally snaps, flying up to his feet so fast he nearly stumbles. Natasha decides right then to open her salad anyway. She folds a piece of lettuce with her fork before piercing it, bringing it up to her mouth and chewing slowly, thoughtfully. It tastes like ash in her mouth.

“With all due respect, Mr. Osborn,” she says after she swallows, fishing out a crouton with one tine of her plastic fork, “your son is a rapist. I know that. You know that. It took the jury eleven minutes to decide that. I’m sorry. I did what I could. But you can’t just hand me a bucket and expect me to keep the Titanic from sinking.”

“I have been a client at this firm for fifteen years,” Norman growls, taking a few steps toward Natasha, careless like a man who doesn’t know the damage a four-inch stiletto can do, “I have made you _millions_. My companies-- _my money_ \--is what kept the lights on the first few years. _I_ did. _Me._ ”

“Yes, Mr. Osborn,” Fury says immediately, leaning forward over his desk so far to plead with him that he might as well be on his knees. Natasha crunches loudly into a crouton. Fury looks like he could murder her. “And we appreciate--”

“And I came to you with this case because I needed your help,” Osborn presses on, pacing now in his growing outrage. “My _son_ needed your help. Fury, I trusted _your firm_ with _my son’s life_ \--”

“He threw away his own life when he roofied a college freshman at a frat party and raped her in front of his friends. _And recorded it_ ,” Natasha cuts in, closing her salad and tossing it with a thunk into Fury’s tiny trashcan. Even standing two inches shorter than Osborn in her heels, her wrath makes her feel like she’s towering over him.

“ _Don’t_ say that!” Osborn marches over and lifts his hands like he wants to strangle her. “ _Don’t_ use that word!”

“He’s a fucking _rapist_ who _drugged and raped_ a girl! He’ll be a registered sex offender when he gets out. Good thing he has a decade in prison. Maybe it’ll give you time to accept the fact that you created a monster.” She’s staring right into his dilated, beady eyes, and all her years of Krav Maga are making her hands twitch with the need to make violent contact with his face.

“That’s it!” Osborn snatches up his jacket from the back of the chair, his hair a wild mess now as it drapes down into his eyes, making him look maniacal. “We’re through, Fury! This relationship is _over_. I’m out. Expect a call from my new attorney Monday morning. You’ll wish you’d never met me.”

“I’m way ahead of you,” Natasha mumbles, all but collapsing back in the chair, slouching in her bespoke suit, thinking once again back to her childhood, to when she was little and her mama asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up.

_”I wanna build houses, Mama,” she’d said, playing in the dirt with a plastic shovel and pretending it was sand. “I wanna learn to build houses. And I’ll build you the best house in the whole world.”_

“You’re fired.”

Natasha startles back into the present, into her life, into what she’d made of it. She realizes she’s staring at Fury without blinking, that her mouth is open like she’s a cartoon.

“Wh… Nick. Wait, you can’t just… I’m… _what?_ ”

“You’re fucking _fired_ , Ms. Romanoff. You have half an hour to pack up your belongings. Security will escort you to your car. Get the fuck out of my office.” Fury picks up the phone receiver, turning his attention to his computer screen.

She can still only stare at him, uncomprehending, struck so dumb that she can’t even move.

“But, Nick, I’m--”

“ _Out_ , Ms. Romanoff!” 

She jumps at the pure rage in his voice, and she has no choice but to obey, moving on autopilot as she leaves the office. She’s too shocked to notice the dead silence that greets her outside, to notice all the eyes on her as she shuffles to what used to be her own office, hand fumbling blindly for the doorknob.

Kamala, Natasha’s legal assistant and sometimes-friend, is the only one who moves, who comes to stand beside her as she hovers in the open doorway, mouth still parted around all the things she didn’t get to say to defend herself.

“Nat,” Kamala whispers, her voice shaking. “What--”

“I’m fine,” Natasha assures her, not even really knowing what she’s saying, but it sounds like the right thing to say at a time like this. There are boxes waiting for her on the floor in front of her desk. It won’t take long to pack up a single framed photo and her laptop.

“I’m fine,” she says again, softer, to herself.

It’s a lie, of course. Just something nice to say when the ship is sinking.

 

Natasha drives a 2016 Porsche 911 R, outfitted with a high-revving 4.0L six-cylinder naturally aspirated engine in shiny, shiny black.

Her name, of course, is Black Betty.

Betty hates LA traffic as much as Natasha does. Maybe even more.

The 10 is a special nightmare today of all days, and it takes her nearly two hours to spill into Santa Monica. She feels numb, almost like she’s watching herself as she drives uncharacteristically slow down the wide, quiet streets, ignoring the bright June sun in the late afternoon, not feeling the usual need to roll down her windows and breathe in the salt and brine from the Pacific Ocean only two blocks away from her house.

She turns into her driveway on muscle memory alone, noting but ignoring the fact that there’s an Audi SUV behind Clint’s Jag.

She leaves the box containing a single framed picture--one of her and Clint kissing on the balcony of their hotel on their honeymoon in Paris five years ago, the Eiffel Tower perfectly centered in the background--in the backseat. 

The front door is unlocked, and a strange but familiar voice greets her when she steps into the foyer.

A bad feeling curls in her stomach, the same kind she used to get when her mama would bring home a man after work, that feeling she’d get when the door would close and there was movement and lowered voices, the feeling that would take over when she curled up under her blankets and covered her head with a pillow, humming Loretta Lynn under her breath and trying so hard not to listen, not to hear.

There’s no song in her head right now, nowhere to hide. She steps out of her shoes and continues toward the kitchen where the sounds are coming from, her lashes fluttering at the rush of noise, her muscles jumpy, flinching.

Maria has always had beautiful legs, long and lean and naturally tan, like a swimmer. Natasha used to envy her in law school, back before she had taken classes about learning to love her own body, before she’d found someone who loved every part of her exactly as it is.

Clint never needed her to be tall, never needed her naturally thick thighs to be thin, never needed her hair to be long or short or up or down to think she was beautiful.

“Fuck me fuck me _fuck me_!”

Natasha lets her eyes focus on the sight before her, on Maria’s perfect legs wrapped around her husband’s waist from her perch on the island, on Clint’s hairy ass clenching as he fucks into her, on the way they’re kissing with a desperation Natasha has never seen outside of soap operas.

Some part of her brain makes her wait, makes her watch for nearly a minute from the doorway, ignoring the way her hands shake, the way tears are burning in her eyes through the numbness. She waits, instinctively timing her interruption for the exact second before Maria comes.

“Could you watch the cutting board? I just bought that.”

A stunned silence follows, the two bodies that had been fucking at each other now frozen, smashed together, and two sets of blue eyes turn to stare at her in shock.

“Nat--” Clint pants, reaching down for the pants still clinging to his thighs. “You’re… you’re home early.”

Maria hops down off the counter, reaching for the cutting board of all things to cover herself. Natasha takes a moment to relish how truly frazzled they both look while a strange sort of hysteria starts to simmer inside of her, one that has laughter pushing up her throat, that makes her want to reach for the knife block and just start throwing until it’s empty.

“Nat, I’m so sorry,” Maria rushes out as she scrambles for her clothes, hurries to button her shirt, to push sweaty strands of hair out of her eyes. “I’m… fuck, this all just--”

“I love her,” Clint says so loudly the words hang around after he’s done speaking, echoing off the marble and tile and steel of the kitchen. “I’m… I’m sorry, Nat. I was going to tell you--”

“ _We_ were going to tell you,” Maria interrupts, looking suddenly so much more in command of the situation now that her pants are buttoned.

“--but everything just kind of happened and it was just sex at first, just… just a way to blow off some steam, but around Christmas it became…” Clint glances over at Maria, hesitating for only a second before he reaches for her hand.

“More,” Maria finishes for him, a small, secret smile tugging on her lips as she searches Clint’s eyes. “It just happened.”

Natasha stares at them for so long that Clint drops Maria’s hand, focusing instead on tucking his shirt back in his pants, keeping his eyes down.

“How many times did it _happen_ in my house?”

“Nat, I don’t want to do this,” Clint says, two big steps bringing him close to Natasha, right in her personal bubble. “We don’t need to do this. With all the dirty details--”

“It’ll come out in court either way,” Natasha says in an agreeable tone, giving a half-hearted shrug with her shoulder. “You’d better go call your lawyer, Clint.”

Clint just blinks at her.

“ _Now_ ,” she snaps.

“But…” Clint glances between Maria and Natasha, a confused smile making his mouth twitch. “But… _you’re_ my lawyer.”

“Then I’m afraid this is all going to turn out very, very badly for you,” Natasha whispers, staring straight into his eyes with her shoulders back, hands balled into fists at her sides. “Get out of my fucking face.”

“We can go to my place,” Maria says, touching Clint’s back and carefully keeping her attention on him. “Go pack a bag.”

Clint looks between them again, his expression something between regret and constipation, before he leaves the kitchen, grabbing his phone off the island on the way to the stairs.

 _At least I’ll never have to see his O-face again_ , Natasha’s mind supplies consolingly.

Maria finishes getting dressed in a quiet efficiency that gives Natasha something else to envy about her, and the silence between them settles in to stay once she’s stopped moving. Natasha finds that she can’t look at her, can’t look at the woman who has been her best friend for over twelve years, the woman who held her hair back when she puked in bathrooms at parties, who helped Natasha find her g-spot, who went on countless beach vacations with her, who has been her shopping partner since law school, the woman whose family is on Natasha and Clint’s Christmas card list, who makes the perfect blackberry cobbler that almost, almost tastes southern, who Natasha has confided in over the last six months about how Clint hasn’t wanted to have sex with her at all.

“I don’t blame you,” she tells Maria quietly.

“Thank you, Nat,” Maria sighs, pushing her hands through her dark hair.

“But if you don’t get the fuck out of my house right now, I’m going to put your head through a wall.” She finally looks at her, and the expression on her face actually makes Maria gasp, her eyes flying open wide as she scrambles for her shoes.

There’s a rush of feet and then the slamming of the front door, and it’s quiet once more. Natasha can only stare at the island now, at the place where her husband had been fucking her best friend. Her phone trills in her pocket, ripping her out of the nightmare of seeing it happen over and over again. She ignores it, lets it ring and ring and ring until it stops, goes to voicemail.

She can’t stop staring. Can’t even blink.

The phone starts up again, sing-songing from her pocket.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she growls, snatching her phone out and staring at the screen as she grits her teeth so hard it feels like they’ll chip. Aunt Shirley. Why the fuck is Aunt Shirley calling her in the middle of the afternoon?

She hits accept just before it goes to voicemail again.

“Aunt Shirley, now’s not really a good time--”

“Natasha, baby,” comes Aunt Shirley’s slow, soft drawl, dragging Natasha right back to North Carolina by the roots of her hair. Time slows down right then, even as Natasha’s heart starts to race.

“Please, Shirley,” she says, so, so close to truly begging. “I-I’ve just had the worst day of my life, and I’m right in the middle of--”

“Honey,” Shirley breaks in with a hitched breath, “your mama died.”


	2. Chapter 2

_Mama, do you remember when I was little, maybe six or seven, and we had that dog? You named her Ally, and she was skin and bones but we loved her. She loved us. And she got pregnant around Halloween one year and she had puppies under the steps. The puppies were all covered in fleas and full of worms but they made the softest, most fragile little sounds and they curled up close to their mama because that’s what you do. That’s what mamas are for, even if they’re barely hanging on themselves._

Right outside of San Bernadino, Natasha realizes that she doesn’t want to be on the fucking interstate anymore. She finds the exit for Cajon Junction and takes it to Highway 138. The sight of two lanes and an unending curve of road lets her breathe for the first time since she walked into her kitchen.

She’d just left, in the end.

No bag packed, no mementos kept, no clothes but the thousand dollar tailored suit she’d wore to court that day. Clint had still been upstairs when she’d started her car up again, the engine revving loud and pointed before she backed out.

She hadn’t looked back at the house, not even when she could hear Clint yelling as he ran out the front door, tried to chase her down the street.

No one could’ve caught her. Especially not him.

The phone rings on the seat beside her, trilling loud and obnoxious for the third time since she’d gotten out of Los Angeles County. Ninth time overall. She lets each ring infuriate her, lets each one make her grit her teeth harder, grip the wheel tighter only to release it all with a whoosh of breath when it goes to voicemail.

When it rings for the tenth time, she snatches it from the seat and rolls down her window. The wind whips in fast and hard as the road curves high over the valley, dragging her hair into a wild, tangled mess of vibrant red. She throws the phone out the window as hard as she can, feeling more than seeing it fly through the air and start to fall down the sharp cliff and into the ravine.

Keeping her eyes on the road, she reaches into the backseat to feel around blindly for the single box back there, the one thing she’d brought with her.

The frame is garish, some kind of textured, brushed gold with an etched floral pattern on it, something Clint had ordered for an insane amount of money but she hadn’t argued about. He’d chosen it for her to put in her office. It was sweet.

She throws the Paris picture much harder, letting out a growl as she does. It falls faster, hits faster. She swears she can hear the glass shatter, hear the metal of the frame hitting rock, can picture the wind ripping the picture into a million pieces and scattering it until it’s unrecognizable as a memory.

Good fucking riddance.

 

Arizona is desolate, it’s empty and expansive and utterly void of humanity. Highway 62 stretches on forever while the desert sprawls on either side, changeless and bleak on the dark night of the new moon.

Natasha is starving, wishing her pride and her growing hysteria would let her stop, let her take her foot off the gas and her eyes off the road so she can rest for a few hours. But she knows it won’t, knows she’s not far enough away from California to find any kind of rest yet.

Not yet.

Her mind starts to drift, to fan out from the unending loop of Clint and Maria on the counter, of Clint telling Natasha he loves Maria, and it settles first on Harry Osborn. Harry who had cornered her in the bathroom at a restaurant, had locked the door and backed her up to the sink and slid a hand down her pants and into her panties before she could even process what was happening. She’d felt the ghost of three of his fingers inside of her for weeks after, had felt the venomous burn of his mouth on hers, on her neck as he’d rubbed at her insides with all the grace of a fifteen year old boy.

She’d been humiliated and terrified, had confided in Maria and cried over the guilt she’d felt, like she had cheated on Clint. She’d told Fury about it and he’d rolled his eyes and all but told her to take a lap, to get back in there, that this was a case they couldn’t afford to lose and there wasn’t time for being delicate about a misunderstanding.

She thinks about finding Clint and Maria upstairs in the hallway during Clint’s birthday party a couple of months ago, about the way Clint had been smiling at her, at the sound of Maria’s laugh echoing in the hall, about Maria’s perfect hand resting on Clint’s chest. She’d found it sweet at the time, her best friend and her husband getting along so well. Thought about how grateful she is for her life, for how nearly perfect it was.

She thinks about her mama’s green eyes, the color of limes, about the freckles that got dark in the summer and looked like cinnamon on her cheeks in the winter. Thinks about her tired, strong hands that were too small to do everything they had done. That had worked in factories sixty hours a week, had been burned on hot plates working the late shift at diners, that had sewn up holes in Natasha’s jeans and scrubbed dirty skillets and changed the oil in her old Buick and fought off men a hundred pounds bigger than her to protect herself, to protect her little girl.

Mama’s hands are cold now. They’ll be cold forever. And she’ll never see her eyes again, she’ll forget the exact green of them in a matter of years. She’ll never hear her laugh, that sound Natasha savored because it meant it was a good day, that things were okay enough to laugh about something small, something silly. She’d never hear her cry again.

She’d heard her mama cry too many times. Knew the sound too well, knew it in her bones where she keeps all her pain, all the dark of those years. She’d left when she was sixteen to try and save herself, to grow up better than Mama could make her, to be more than her mama ever knew to be herself. 

She had run. Had saved herself. She’d left, just like she’s leaving now. She’d left Mama to quiet days, left her alone, to innumerable hours of silence with only her memories to keep her company.

Natasha hadn’t seen her for five years. Hadn’t spoken to her on the phone since Christmas. Had promised so many things to her, had promised to take her to the beach, to see the ocean she loved so much, to sit down and talk to her, to finally, finally talk to her in a way she never had before.

And now Mama’s gone. Colder than life and alone. Still alone.

Natasha realizes that she’s drifting on the road, that her face is a mess of tears and snot, that her hands are shaking on the wheel as she weaves back and forth, into the oncoming lane that’s as empty as her own and back only to do it again.

It scares her, makes her hold her breath, but she doesn’t stop, can’t escape from how strangely freeing it is. Everything around her is flat and straight forever, nothing but desert and brush and a speed limit sign telling her to go fifty. Her eyes fix on the sign and hold, and she finds that she can’t look away. Her tired foot presses down on the gas, shoving her car forward even faster, the engine revving under the sound of the wind rushing all around her.

She turns the wheel and aims right for it, for the metal post holding the sign in the ground. She chickens out at the last second and closes her eyes, so she doesn’t see when she hits it head-on.

The sound is deafening, the bend and crunch of metal against metal, and then nothing. She opens her eyes and lifts them slowly, amazed to see that the sign is bent but not down, that her hood has been crushed around it and is sticking up at odd angles where the post has dented it. Her heart is pounding in her ears, and she doesn’t realize how much she’s shaking until she lets go of the wheel and turns the car off.

She grabs her purse and her laptop bag from the floorboard, making sure the car is locked out of habit before she shuts the door behind her. She tucks her keys into her pocket, shoves the bags up onto her shoulder, and continues down the road on foot, her Louboutins making sharp, scuffing clicks on the cracking pavement.

 

Her feet start to bleed after a couple of miles, and the country girl in her refuses to debate the merits of keeping them on. She lets them dangle from her fingertips as she walks on, barefoot and red-toed, her feet smooth and pampered and hurting with every step, completely unused to such abuse anymore.

When she was little, she lived life without shoes, had tough feet that could take on any gravel, any hot sidewalk, anything the world threw at her. 

Aunt Sandy had made her wear shoes when she moved up to Indiana. She’d taken her straight to JCPenney’s, had her foot measured, and bought her a pair of tennis shoes, a pair of sandals, a pair of boots, and a pair of kitten heels.

Natasha hated every fucking one of them. Still does, if she’s being completely honest with herself.

The rumble of a truck can be heard for about a mile, and it catches up to her pretty quickly. It’s early morning, young as a newborn, the sky just barely easing into a paleness along the horizon. The headlights illuminate the road in front of her, and the engine shakes the ground under her feet.

“M’am?”

Natasha stops and turns, looking into the lit cabin of the old pickup at the even older man behind the wheel, his face wrinkled and kind, mouth pulled down into a concerned frown.

“Hey,” she replies, not moving closer to him. She tightens her grip on the stilettos.

“Is that your car back there wrapped around the speed limit sign?”

Natasha looks back down the road to a place she can’t quite see, where it’s too dark still to see Black Betty in her final resting place.

“I guess it is,” she says.

“...You hit the only speed limit sign for ten miles?”

Natasha’s jaw tenses as she cuts a glance at the old man, her full mouth pulling into its own frown.

“You want somethin’?”

“Just wanted to make sure you were alright, is all,” he says, his tone easing up. “See if you needed a lift into town.”

“What town?” she asks.

“Sunrise is right on up ahead. That’s where I live. But Phoenix is only fifteen minutes more, if that’s where you’re headin’. I’d be glad to help you out.”

She stays quiet, staring right at the man as she considers it. He seems harmless enough, looks frail and old enough that she could take him, if she needed to. There’s no expectation on his face, no predatory dance of his eyes over her body, nothing but a gentle concern, like she’s his long-lost granddaughter.

“Sure,” she finally says, opening up the passenger door and using the open window to hoist herself up into the truck. “Thanks.”

“Phoenix, then?” he asks, nodding at the seatbelt to her right before putting his foot back on the gas and easing on down the road.

“Phoenix,” she agrees, holding back the sigh. 

She can’t even kill herself right.

 

Black Betty gets to Phoenix about an hour after Natasha does, and she’s greeted by an audience at Dynamite Auto Sales that consists solely of men, mechanics who work in the garage who had been told about the Porsche 911 that was being towed in and had to see it for themselves.

Natasha sucks on her apple kiwi kale smoothie and watches the spectacle, nearly snorting for the sighs and exclamations that go up when the tow truck finally pulls to a stop and they can see Betty in her full glory for the first time.

“Damage isn’t as bad as I was afraid of,” Dave, the owner of the joint, says. He pulls off his baseball cap just long enough to scratch the top of his head before he pulls it back down, never once taking his eyes off of Betty. “Oh, she’s a beauty. She’s gotta be practically brand new. Almost a two-hundred thousand dollar car--”

“One eighty-four nine,” Natasha says, giving her cup a shake and taking another long suck of smoothie. “I got her six months ago. Paid cash.”

A few of the men react to that, some of the sounds nearly orgasmic.

“We don’t…” Dave starts, still looking at Betty out of the corner of his eyes with a longing that almost makes Natasha embarrassed for him. “We don’t have the parts for her here. We’ll probably have to order parts from Germany. It might take awhile. And it won’t be cheap. There’s probably--”

“I want to trade,” she interrupts, throwing the smoothie in the trash and folding her arms across her chest, looking him square in the eyes when he finally tears them off the Porsche. 

“I don’t have any cars you can trade for this,” Dave laughs, his eyes wild, overwhelmed. “Not even in the condition she’s in. The most I’ve got is an Acura--”

“That one,” she cuts in, nodding to the red Jeep Wrangler to Dave’s left with the $33,995 sticker on it. “That’s the one I want.”

All of the men react to that, turning to stare at her in some kind of fish-like synchronicity, all their eyes massive, mouths gawping and wordless.

“You want to trade,” Dave says slowly, “this Porsche 911 for a… a Jeep Wrangler?”

“Yep,” Natasha replies.

“A _used_ Jeep Wrangler?”

“Yep.” She pulls her wallet out and hands Dave her license, not letting him look away when they make eye contact again. “And I want to leave within the hour. Make it happen.”

 

The men are still loitering around outside when she leaves, all of them pacing and restless and walking by to run a hand over Betty who is now in the garage, waiting in a stall like a racehorse. None of them speak when Natasha walks by them on her way to her new Jeep, freshly washed and full of gas and ready to go.

It growls when it starts up, and she steps on the gas a few times to let the engine shatter the quiet morning. She buckles her seatbelt, adjusts the rearview, and pulls out of the lot back onto the road.

“Dumbfucks,” she mutters under her breath.

The men stay mostly silent as they watch her leave, only the occasional clearing of throats and the flick of a lighter interrupting it. Dave comes outside finally, watching the dot of red disappear down the road with the rest of them.

“Women,” he says, shaking his head as he tugs his cap off again to scratch at the bald spot. The other men send up a chorus of murmurs in agreement before they turn as one to the abandoned Porsche, hunger and joy in their eyes.

 

The parking lot of the Wal-Mart is mostly empty. She stares up at the building with growing mistrust before she even gets out of the car, and it takes her a full thirty seconds to step inside once the sliding doors have opened. She just barely gets a basket from the stack before she turns and sees a camouflage shirt with an eagle on it and the longest beard she’s ever seen west of the Mississippi.

“Not today, Satan,” she says to absolutely no one, dropping the basket back down with a clatter and marching out, heels snapping hard on the tile. 

She’ll find a Target if it kills her.

 

She grabs all of the bags from her cart and carries them into the bathroom, heading for the handicap stall and dropping them all on the floor. She changes quickly, pulling on fresh underwear, a black cotton bra that does nothing flattering for her tits, a snug pair of skinny jeans, and a white wifebeater. She steps into a pair of classic black Converse slip-ons and out of the stall feeling ten years younger.

She charges her new cellphone on an outlet under the sink as she washes her face and her pits, and it’s only after she’s flipped her head down and brushed her hair until it’s soft and untangled and there are tears in her eyes from the pain that she realizes she has an audience.

She glances over at the two children and the mother washing their hands in the sink beside her, blinking at her owlishly with matching brown eyes. Natasha tugs her hair up into a ponytail and stuffs all the hangers and tags in the trash, not addressing them until she’s at the door, shoving her phone in her pocket.

“What size shoe do you wear?” she asks the mother.

“Six and a half,” she says, the words accented and uncertain.

“There’s a pair of Louboutins in the last stall, if you want ‘em,” she tells her, nodding over at it. “A suit that might fit you, too. Valentino. Wear them, sell them online, do whatever you want.”

The woman’s eyes are huge, her small arms wrapped around her kids.

“Th-Thank you,” she stammers.

“I can see your bra through your shirt,” the little girl says, pointing.

“Good,” Natasha replies, looking down at her chest with a smirk. “It’s a cute bra.”

 

It’s early afternoon and already sweltering by the time she gets back to the Jeep and stuffs all the bags in the backseat. She grabs a bottle of water and a Clif bar out, forcing herself to eat and drink all of it before she can stop moving. She pushes the seat back to recline and tugs on the sleep mask she’d bought in Target, cranking the air up to blast on her bare arms as she finally relaxes, lets out the breath she’d probably been holding since the end of the trial.

She’s asleep within seconds.

 

It’s already pushing near eighty degrees, and it’s not even nine in the morning. 

Wanda turns the fan so it can blow on her as she stands in front of the mirror, meeting her own eyes unflinchingly while she drags her hair up and up and up, feeling it tickle at the small of her back and her shoulder blades and finally the back of her neck. She fastens it back in a nested, wild ponytail, not giving it a second glance after it’s secured. She squints at herself, at the freckles spotting across her nose, at the stray hairs on her eyebrows.

“Eh,” she says.

She gets dressed quickly, pulling on the short, ruby red sundress that kisses at the middle of her thighs and layering it with as many necklaces as she can find. The charms on her bracelets clink and clank together as she piles rings on her long fingers, and her old white Keds feel like home on her feet.

She can hear Dahlia playing outside, pretending to be an airplane as she follows the paths of the fat bees buzzing around in Mom’s flower garden. She’ll walk her to Honey Creek Summer Day Camp on the way to the diner, and Sam will have dinner started by the time Wanda and Rose get home from work.

They make it work, the three of them. And they do it for that beautiful little girl.

Wanda grabs the tiny snip of the joint she has left and lights it, closing her eyes as she breathes in the last little bit of it and exhales it in a sigh. She grabs her half-eaten muffin off her dresser, tugs her bag across her body, and steps out into the hot, summer morning. She breaks off a little of the muffin, making sure there’s a blueberry in it before dropping it onto the plate on the corner of the porch for the fairies to eat at their leisure.

She takes her own bite of the muffin as she walks down the curved staircase leading out of the treehouse and into the small copse of trees surrounding it just off the backyard. She grins when she hears Dahlia call her name, and she barely has time to hold her muffin up out of the way before she’s got an armful of sunshine, her sweet seven-year-old niece clinging to her like they haven’t seen each other in years.

“C’mon, honeybee,” she says, wrapping an arm around Dahlia’s narrow shoulders and guiding her through the yard, through all the gardens to the street. “Let’s go see what today has in store for us.”


	3. Chapter 3

Now, Natasha Romanoff is something of a local legend in Honey Creek. She hasn’t lived there since she was sixteen, not that anyone listening to the locals talk could tell.

“Moved from here back in '04, went to live with some rich aunt up North. Broke ol' Staci’'s heart, but she left. Ain't nobody seen Natasha for years, but she's some big shot out in California now, they say. Some big agent or somethin'."

"She used to come back'n visit of the summer, least for a few years. Got prettier’n prettier every year. Spittin' image of Staci. Same green eyes. I think she does somethin' in Hollywood. Directin' movies, 'f I recall."

"Made something of ‘erself, dinnit she? Just got right on up and left when it was time, just went on up North and then to college and never looked back. And she's from right here, right in Honey Creek. Was in one of them magazines on one-a those lists, the money lists. Least that's what Ellen says."

“Yeah, I remember Nat. She was a friend of my big sister, Sofia. She was always so smart, you could tell. Real quiet sometimes, ‘specially when we all went up into the mountains to swim or somethin’. She’d just get all quiet and stare off into the distance like she was workin’ something out in her head. Thinkin’ about something real important. I always wanted to go sit beside her, to just be near her when she was all serious like that, but I never wanted to bother her. Didn’t seem right.”

“Wanda! You’ve got two orders up, girl!”

Wanda stands up straight, the coffee pot she’s holding sloshing dangerously in her tired grip. She hands the paper with Staci’s obituary, wipes the tears dampening her flushed cheeks, and turns back to the busy diner.

“Comin’, Mama!”

 

By the time Natasha hits the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, she already feels like a haunt. She’s hollow-eyed and dream-slow, five pounds lighter in the three days it took her to drive 2,227 miles across the country. She’s fallen quiet even within herself, no thoughts but the occasional memory: a snippet of Mama saying “Natty-Boo,” the smell after fireworks on the 4th of July around Redhorse Lake, the insane colors the sky gets after a storm on a hot summer evening, and the taste of Kraft mac and cheese with ketchup during the really lean times when food came from churches around town.

The foothills of the mountains look the same, all kudzu and hilly stretches of worn highway and an unending variety of Baptist churches with names like Shepherd’s Glory and Morning Star and Gist Creek. Humanity gives way to trees and then she’s finally in the mountains themselves, cradled by softly swaying Carolina silverbells and eastern hemlocks and flowering dogwoods as the road tightens and curves and lets her feel well and truly lost.

By the time she spills into North Carolina, into the Qualla Boundary of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, she’s lighter all over, the muscles of her neck and shoulders unknotted, her hair a wild tangle on her sun-pinked shoulders. The bottom half of her jeans are still damp from wading into the Little River around midnight, and she can feel herself getting closer and closer to Honey Creek, to home. To her mama.

She tightens her grip on the wheel so she doesn’t have to think about how hard she’s trembling all over.

 

Honey Creek is a town of silent shadows when she arrives. She drives those streets by memory alone, going through the tiny, postcard downtown to get to the outskirts, to the sad parts missing from every tourism website, to where she’s well and truly from. Stray dogs stumble along the sides of the road, starved and driven by some unending will that Natasha relates to with a painful intimacy. The road cracks and breaks under her tires, neglected as everything and everyone else out here.

The lights are off in most every trailer she passes, and when she gets to the lot where she used to share a home with Mama, she finds it empty, nothing but a spread of scorched dirt and stray gravel. She pulls in right where Mama used to park the Buick and kills the engine, letting the sounds of a southern night in through the open windows; cicadas so loud their song rings in her ears, frogs crooning in the nearby creek, dogs barking restlessly from the trailers left in this mostly abandoned park.

Humidity floods the Jeep, making the still air feel like something she could cup in her palm. She pushes the seat back and closes her eyes, letting the moisture soak into her bone-dry skin. She hears the rain start up just as sleep takes her under, feels it land in warm patters on her arm.

 

She wakes to a dog bark and the harried skuttle of bare feet on dirt, followed by surprised little-kid laughter and shushes. She jerks upright in her seat, bleary-eyed and feeling almost hungover. She squints in the rearview mirror and sees three little boys wearing nothing but cut-offs and rat-tails running away from her Jeep with a heavily pregnant dog. She sighs and rubs her eyes, groaning at the starbusts in the black of her vision as a migraine becomes fully realized just at the back of her eyesockets.

Coffee. Now.

Her phone’s dead but she can tell by the sun it’s well after eight in the morning as she drives back into town. It’s hotter than the hinges of hell already, the air just as thick and stagnant as it was last night. Honey Creek is awake this time though, it’s teeming with movement and life on every street she drives down, and the closer she gets to downtown, she realizes that absolutely nothing has changed in the decade since she was last here: tractors still drive on the main roads like they belong; cows still shuffle along in fields next to horses and goats, unaware of their separate fate; the air still smells like yeast and sugar outside the donut shop at the top of Main Street, and everyone still smiles here, still waves good morning, still sees every tiny thing that goes on with everybody else so they can report back to their book club or bible study group or their best friend in a whispered evening phone conversation on the front porch while kids chase lightning bugs in the yard.

She follows the smell of coffee to a diner that she doesn’t remember existing back when, and she’s not yet awake enough to care that she looks rode hard and put up wet when she walks into the little place. The smell of sausage and bacon and cheese hits her full force and makes her stomach cramp in protest of all the missed meals between here and California.

Nearly every table is full, brimming with old people stirring their grits and babies spilling their juice and people with jobs shoveling food into their mouths as fast as they can with one hand while they text with the other. It startles her that she recognizes at least five people in a single glance.

“Sit anywhere!” comes a disembodied voice from somewhere near the counter.

Natasha’s eyes widen as the realization slowly sinks in that all these people can see her, too. She lowers her head and weaves through the restaurant, not looking up even as she slides into one of the few available seats at the counter and grabs a time-softened menu.

“Want some coffee, hon?”

A man about her age appears in front of her without warning, his voice so soft she barely hears it over the rush behind her. A lift of her eyes confirms what she thought: a long boy with fine hands and thick dark hair falling out of a hasty ponytail around a sweet baby face and sad blue eyes: Bucky Barnes.

“Sure,” she says, averting her eyes again and clearing her throat when she realizes how low and scraped-raw her voice is. She doesn’t look up as he pours it, doesn’t do anything but lift her cup in silent thanks and wait until he drifts away to take a sip. The caffeine zaps through her system as she takes more and more drinks, ignoring the way it burns her tongue and clean down her throat. She almost feels alive again.

A glance at the menu shows the predictable list of southern breakfast foods, a pretty thorough compilation of things Natasha has denied herself since she started college on the west coast. She stares at the biscuits and gravy for a long, pained moment before forcing her eyes to the oatmeal and fruit bowl breakfast, reminding herself of all the work she’d put into her thighs this year.

“Ohmygod.”

Natasha looks up without thinking, eyebrows raised with an instinctive question. There are two sets of wide, clear eyes on her, staring like she’s an apparition. Bucky manages to look contrite as he takes in the expression on Natasha’s face, but the other one, the girl, seems stuck staring at her, stunned.

“I can’t believe you’re really here.”

There’s a vague sense of familiarity there, but Natasha is convinced she’d remember somebody that pretty. She’s got the round, soft-cheeked face of a Botticelli angel, the same big bright eyes and pink mouth, but she’s all human, all real, all earthy and warm colors and patchworked into one of the most unusual, stunning creatures Natasha has ever seen.

She tears her eyes away from the forgotten falls of loose dark hair and the musical sound of her jewelry as it settles around her long neck and her graceful wrists and finds her face again, the seaglass-green of her eyes, and it’s only then that she realizes the girl is crying.

There’s a rush of movement, the sound of a counter door swinging, and Natasha suddenly has soft girl arms around her neck and the scent of honeysuckle and cedar in her nose.

“Nat, I’m so sorry about your mama.”

She sits there, stunned, feeling the girl’s warmth seeping into her, more consuming than the morning sun’s heat, but she doesn’t move, doesn’t lift a hand to rest on the girl’s back, doesn’t know the first damn thing to say to her, and so she says nothing, does nothing.

There’s a stir behind her in the diner and then a sudden hush that falls, and Natasha knows the second they start to notice, start to watch, start to realize who she is. There are hands on her before she can even react, gentle hands on her back and on her aching shoulders followed up with sweet, well-meaning words about her mom.

“Staci was such a kind woman. Even though she always had it rough--”

“I remember that time your mama brought you around to see us at Christmas--”

“She never overcharged me to do my nails. She was always reasonable, even when--”

“After you left, we didn’t know what would happen or how she’d keep on goin’ but--”

Natasha jumps up from her stool and forces her way out of the girl’s arms and away from all of them, from their hands and their memories and pushes her way through the sudden crowd, not stopping until she opens the door and bursts outside into the hot morning. A numbness settles around her like a shroud as she walks back to the Jeep, completely unaware of the tears slipping down her flushed face.

She locks the doors once she’s safe inside, and she closes her eyes as she rests her head back against the seat, terrified of the way her heart is pounding in her throat but she can’t seem to breathe.

All these years, everything she’s been through, and this is her very first panic attack.

 

Two phone calls gets her the number to Mama’s attorney, an appointment to meet with him in two hours, and the address where Mama’s house is.

It’s only a few streets over from the main drag, in part of town with neatly trimmed yards and kids playing with toys that don’t look second or third-hand. Mama’s house is cornflower blue with a navy door and shutters and white trim, and the yard is absolutely overflowing with bright bursts of flowers in every color Natasha can imagine.

She pulls into the driveway behind a ten year old Civic and gets out slowly, not taking her eyes from the house for a second. There are statues of angels all over the tiny front porch and all through the garden, and lifting the one to the right of the door reveals the key that Carl Starnam had told her was there.

The inside of the house is still and quiet, the hardwood floors dark and dusty and creaking under her slow footfall. There are plants everywhere, still thriving from whenever Mama watered them last, and there are paintings of dragonflies and angels on every wall, interspersed with pictures of Natasha herself at every stage of life. The books in the livingroom are all self-help and those inspirational books that make Natasha cringe when she sees them at Barnes and Noble, and the kitchen is clean but cluttered with knick-knacks, the little table in the corner still holding a tiny vase of honeysuckle Mama probably got from the backyard.

The bedroom walls are a muted turquoise and the curtains are purple, the bed covered in a quilt that Natasha remembers from when she was younger, one that her Mama had gotten from her own mother when she died, that she’d treasured as something of a family heirloom, ignoring its unknown provenance and that the fabric is in tatters in places. There’s a trickling little fountain on one side of the room, water running over little pebbles and into a small pool. It makes a beautiful, quiet sound, the only one in the house, and Natasha realizes it’s been here babbling and soothing absolutely no one for almost four days.

It feels like Mama is still here, like she just left, like she’s going to come back home with some flowers picked from her garden and a Mountain Dew from the gas station, talking about how cute the kids next door are in their plastic pool.

It’s impossible. She can’t be gone. The world can’t just keep on without her. It wouldn’t. It never has in Natasha’s whole life, and there’s no way she’s not here anymore. There’s just no way--

She feels it starting up again, building up in her chest. Panic. She closes her eyes and wonders what Mama’s self-help books would tell her to do. They would tell her to breathe, just like she learned in yoga, to inhale as deep as she can and exhale until there’s nothing left in her.

After twenty-two of those breaths, she opens her eyes. The room is still here, the fountain is still here, and so is Natasha.

It’s a start.

She brings in her worldly possessions, all purchased at a Target in Arizona, and takes a shower in Mama’s bathroom. She uses her shampoo, her towels, her lotion. She gets dressed in a thin black t-shirt and another pair of clinging jeans and sits down at the table next to the honeysuckle and starts to make a list on the back of an envelope of things she needs to buy immediately.

_shampoo_  
_soap_  
_bottled water_  
_black dress for funeral_  
_shoes (??)_  
_moisturizer_  
_whiskey_  
_ weed_

She’ll go grocery shopping tomorrow, get food enough to last for a couple of days while she figures out what she’s going to do, what needs to be done to the house before she puts it on the market, how long she’s going to--

“Wanda Maximoff,” she says suddenly, dropping the pen on the table with a clatter. “Holy shit.”

The last time she’d seen Wanda, the girl had been fourteen, just about to start at Honey Creek High. She’d had braces, wore tie-dyed t-shirts like she toured with the Dead, and puppy-followed Sofia and Natasha and their gaggle of friends around with a bright smile like she was in on some special secret, always with a book clutched in her arms.

Her best friend’s little sister. How could she forget her? How many nights had she spent at the Maximoff house, surrounded by the haze of Rose’s patchouli incense, eating frybread and pinto beans, and listening to records in the den?

“You’re such an asshole,” Natasha reminds herself with a sigh.

 

The house is hers. Carl Starnam gives her the master keys, including one to a shed out back, and ones to her Mama’s little red Civic. She signs all the papers he hands her after reading over them carefully herself, listens to the modest list of things she is inheriting, and tries not to think about how proud she is of everything her mother did for herself.

Every check Natasha ever sent her went uncashed, and the few conversations they’d had on the phone over the years always went the same: _no, I’m fine, it’s your money, I don’t need it, Natty-Boo. I’m doin’ just fine._

She’d been telling the truth.

She leaves the attorney a homeowner, a Honda owner, and a nail salon owner. The car she’ll sell to somebody local for cheap, the salon she’ll hand over for nothing to the loyal nail tech who’d worked with Mama for years, and the house. Well.

She can think about that later. There’s whiskey to buy, for now.

 

Errands run and phonecalls made back to California to have divorce papers served to that fuck of a husband she’s about to be rid of, she realizes around four in the afternoon that she still hasn’t eaten. She winds up back at Daisy’s Diner without ever really deciding to go.

There are only two tables taken this time, both by old people who probably eat dinner at four in the afternoon every day. Wanda is there with her back to the door, stirring what looks like a truly gigantic vat of sweet tea on her tiptoes.

“I’ll be right with you!” she calls over her shoulder as the bell above the door announces Natasha’s presence.

“Wanda Guthrie Maximoff,” Natasha says.

Wanda whirls around in a flurry of jingling jewelry and droopy ponytail, her face flushed and shiny with exertion, her eyes almost heartbreakingly huge as she stares at Natasha who is slowly making her way to the counter with a smile on her face that she can’t keep off.

“Um,” Wanda replies, wiping her hands on the apron around her waist as she lowers her eyes in something akin to embarrassment. “I… I-I’m--”

“You were always jealous that Sofia got Dylan as her middle name. You always liked Bobby more. I remember when you tried to bribe Sofia to switch middle names with you because she forgot your birthday one year.” Natasha settles on a stool probably twice as old as she is and rests her elbows on the counter, her chin propped in her hands as she watches the way Wanda gets increasingly more flustered by the second.

“I’m so sorry about earlier, Nat,” Wanda says in a rush, clutching at the damp rag in her hand so hard that her knuckles turn white. She looks up in a flash of pleading green, and Natasha doesn’t have it in her to look away. “I shouldn’t’a done that. It was just a reaction. I wasn’t expecting to see you. To be honest, I never thought I’d see you again. And when Bucky told me you were here, I just… I didn’t think. And I’m truly sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Natasha shrugs, lowering her arms down to her lap and slouching like a little kid. “It’s been a weird few days. I promise, being surrounded by people who care about me wasn’t the worst of it.”

Wanda just stares at her, chewing on her plump bottom lip and not talking, like she’s not convinced, or like she didn’t get the punishment she felt she deserved.

“Well,” Wanda says finally, softly, “it’s good to see you.”

“You, too,” Natasha replies. And she means it. “You look… I mean. Jesus. You grew up.”

Wanda laughs, a surprised burst of sound that makes Natasha grin before she can stop it.

“Yeah, well. Braces have to come off sometime, I guess.” She wipes idly at the counter with her rag, eyes down like she’s shy all of a sudden. “You’re… Nat, you’re just beautiful. You’re probably a model or something. Out in California. Am I right?”

“You know a lot of models who are five foot three with these thighs?” Natasha asks, raising an eyebrow at her, but she’s flattered all the same. “No, not a model. I was an attorney. A corporate lawyer. Worked where souls go to die.”

“That sounds poetic,” Wanda says, her cleaning coming to a pause as she finally looks up. “And your thighs are just fine, Natasha Romanoff.”

A beat.

“Wait. Did you say ‘was’?”

Natasha leans over to grab a menu from one end of the counter.

“Hmm?”

“Was,” Wanda repeats, a frown taking over her pretty mouth. “You said ‘I was an attorney.’”

“Yeah.” Natasha looks over the lunch menu, over the salads. “I got fired four days ago.”

“Fired?!” Wanda exclaims. “For what? I want a name. Is that fancy office of yours still open? Hmm? What’s their number?”

She pulls a cell phone out of her apron and holds it up, thumb poised. She raises her eyebrows expectantly at Natasha.

Ranch, honey mustard, thousand island. No vinaigrette, not even one.

“Hmm?” she says again, glancing up to find Wanda staring at her. “What?”

“Give me their number! And the jerk who fired you. What’s his name?”

“How do you know it’s a he?” Natasha asks. Wanda snorts.

“It’s _always_ a he. C’mon. Number.”

Natasha smiles, sweeter this time. She looks around the slow diner to see who’s listening to this.

“Wanda,” she says with a sigh, her dimple flashing as she tucks her hair behind her ear. “I promise. It’s okay. It’s for the best.”

“Well, alright,” Wanda replies, frowning. She tucks her phone back in her apron pocket. “If you say so.”

“I do. But thank you.” She shifts on the seat, schooling her face into something a little less charmed so she can carry on an actual conversation. “So, hey. What’s good here? I’m starved. And I don’t see any vinaigrette. Surely you’ve got balsamic at least, right?”

“Natasha. Look at me.”

Natasha looks up at Wanda whose sweet face is sharp with seriousness. She matches it with a careful frown of her own.

“Yes’m.”

“You’ve had a really crappy week. Am I right? First that job of yours, and then your mama?”

“And my husband,” Natasha replies.

Wanda looks like she wants to sit down. All the color drains from her face, and her features get a little more pinched, her mouth thinning out. She clears her throat and goes back to choking her rag.

“Husband? What husband? What about him?”

“Clint. Husband of five years. Came home and found him fucking--”

Wanda clears her throat again, more pointed this time. Natasha looks up and finds her nodding over to the old people at the table nearby.

“... _Having relations_ ,” Natasha amends, “with my best friend. On my kitchen counter.”

Wanda’s mouth drops open.

“What’s his phone number?” she hisses, reaching into her apron again.

Natasha lifts up in the stool to reach over and rest a hand on the back of Wanda’s, stilling it. Those eyes find her immediately, so strangely vulnerable even through the anger.

“It’s okay,” Natasha says again. “Another thing that’s probably for the best. They’re in love. You can’t help who you love, right? Isn’t that what they say?”

“They most certainly do,” Wanda mumbles with a sigh. Natasha removes her hand and sits back down.

“Besides, we didn’t sign a prenup, and he’s an heir who’s worth about a billion dollars. I get half. I promise, I’ll be fine.”

Wanda laughs again, a little more evil this time.

“Billions? Wow, that’s… that’s a lot of balsamic vinaigrette.”

“See? I’m all set.”

“What I was gettin’ to is that you’ve had a rough go of it lately,” Wanda continues.

“Pretty damn rough,” Natasha agrees.

“I say if there’s ever been a situation that calls for plain ol’ comfort food, this is it. What do you say?”

Natasha leans forward, eyebrow quirked.

“What do you have in mind, Wanda Guthrie?”

“Chicken and waffles, smothered in syrup--”

“Ohmygod,” Natasha whimpers.

“And Sprite with vanilla,” Wanda finishes with an indulgent smile. “You still like Sprite with vanilla?”

Natasha shakes her head in amazement.

“How in the world do you remember that?”

Wanda grins.

“Is that a yes?”

“It’s an _emphatic_ yes,” Natasha says, passing her the menu.

“Comin’ right up, Nat.” Wanda reaches over and rests a hand on top of Natasha’s, giving it a squeeze. Her voice falls quiet and just for Natasha. “I know this is a pain you’ve never imagined possible, but I want you to know that you’re not alone. Not even for one second. Okay?”

Natasha stares down at her hand, at the silver rings set with garnets and jet and turquoise, at the little moon filled with rainbow moonstone banded around the middle of her forefinger, at the chipped black nail polish on her short nails. It’s a warm hand, a familiar one, and it keeps Natasha grounded, doesn’t let her mind take off into darkness the way it has relentlessly the last few days.

“Thank you,” she says softly, not looking up.

Another squeeze and she’s gone in a song of silver and smelling like the flowers on Mama’s kitchen table. Natasha takes her first full breath in hours and lets it out slowly as the feeling of finally being home starts to seep in around the edges.

 

The chicken is so soft it falls right off the bone, and the seasoned meat of it goes perfectly with the buttersoftness of the waffles and the thick, warm bath of syrup covering the whole thing. Natasha cleans her plate and licks her fingers, drinking down two whole glasses of homemade vanilla Sprite before she sits back in the chair, nearly bursting full and so satisfied she can’t do anything but smile.

“Save room for dessert?” Wanda asks, grinning as she takes Natasha’s plate and her empty glass.

Natasha groans in response, fumbling blindly for her black Birkin bag on the floor, but she’s too stuffed to reach it.

“You’re trying to kill me,” she replies, fingers waggling futilely for the purse straps.

“I’m takin’ care of you, darlin’. That’s a whole different thing,” Wanda argues, momentarily ignoring the now-busy diner and Bucky who is flitting around behind her like a hummingbird, armed with fried food and soda and slow, sweet smiles. “And it’s on the house.”

“Wanda,” Natasha sighs, shaking her head with an exasperated smile, “what part of billions don’t you understand?”

“The part where this is me doing something nice for somebody I care about. You can’t put a pricetag on that.” She tears off the ticket from her little book and puts it on a stack behind her, the kindness on her face almost overwhelming. Natasha finally reaches her bag and pulls it up into her lap, wrapping her arms around it and leaning forward.

“Thank you,” is all she can say. “Really.”

“Wanda, I need a ten minute break,” Bucky says, appearing out of nowhere beside Wanda and looking desperate. Wanda looks over Natasha’s shoulder and smiles knowingly before meeting Bucky’s eyes and nodding.

“Go on,” she tells him. “I’ll cover you.”

Natasha glances over her shoulder and sees a tree of a man in a denim jacket over a dirty white shirt and dark jeans, a baseball cap pulled over what looks like short, sweaty blonde hair, and who has eyes for absolutely no one but Bucky.

“Steve?” she says, stunned.

Summer sky blue eyes find her and grow absolutely massive before Steve comes to life, rushing through the diner and grabbing Natasha and lifting her, Birkin and all, off the stool and into the biggest bear hug she’s ever gotten in her entire life.

“Nat,” he whispers in her ear, tears evident in his voice. She drops her bag and turns in his arms to wrap her own around his amazingly slim waist, unable to do anything but bury her face against his solid chest and try not to have second breakdown at Daisy’s Diner in one day.

Of all the people she left behind, after her mama, her cousin Steve had been the hardest to let go of.

“It’s okay,” he says, one massive hand cupping the back of her head, petting her as he holds her tight with the other arm. “Honey, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about aunt Staci.”

She makes a soft sound in her throat as she shakes in his arms, and she realizes after a very long moment that she’s clinging to him, that she’s sniffling into his shirt that smells like sweat and woodchips and sunshine, and that, once again, the whole diner is watching her lose it.

“I’m okay,” she manages, strangles out. He gives her a final squeeze and pulls back, using the sleeve of his soft jacket to wipe at Natasha’s face, his big body shielding her from all the curious eyes behind him. “Sorry about that, Jesus. I’m okay. Thanks.”

“I wasn’t expecting to see you. I didn’t know if you were coming in. Mom said she called you the other day, but she never told me you were coming.” He tugs her to sit back down in her stool as he straddles the one beside her, dwarfing the little seat.

“I drove,” she replies, feeling young again with Steve here, feeling safe the way she always did with him. “Got in early this morning. It’s been a crazy day.”

“I bet,” he says, his voice brimming with sympathy, hand squeezing and rubbing at her shoulder in a way that’s entirely genuine, that doesn’t make her feel pathetic, somehow. “Listen, I don’t want to keep you. I know you’re probably exhausted, and tomorrow is a long day. Here, let me give you my number.”

Natasha fishes through her bag and pulls out her phone, handing it over to him without hesitation. The light from the screen makes his eyes look unreal as he taps on the screen, and he hands it back over to her with a smile.

“There. You can call me any time, day or night. The reception is gonna be at our house after the burial on Wednesday, so you can just come on over. Do you need a place to stay? Where are you staying?”

“At Mama’s,” Natasha tells him, clutching her phone with his number in it like a lifeline. “It’s… it’s fine. I’m fine. Thanks, Steve.”

“If you need anything, you call me,” he emphasizes as he climbs up from the stool, walking backwards like he’s heading behind the counter. “Anything at all.”

“I will,” she promises, tucking her phone back in her bag. “I’ll… see you tomorrow at the funeral home.”

He pauses then, staring at her for a few seconds before he comes back over, cupping her face in his hands and pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

“It’s good to see you,” he says softly. “Love you, Batty.”

Natasha frowns as best as she can, trying to push him away, but he’s huge now, harder to move than a mountain.

“Don’t call me that,” she warns, digging her fingers into his ribs, her secret weapon to best him since she was five. He makes a ridiculous noise and backs away from her, grinning from ear to ear the whole time he shuffles behind the counter where Bucky is waiting with a restless sort of patience.

Steve waves with a wiggle of tanned, calloused fingers, gives her a smile that would melt even the coldest heart, and ducks into the back with Bucky in tow.

Wanda hurries by with a few plates on a tray, the dinner rush just finally getting started. She makes a mental note to ask her later why Steve just made himself at home at the diner and stands up, shrugging her bag up onto her shoulder and heading for the door.

“Nat! Wait!”

She turns just as she opens the door to the storm-cloud early evening and finds Wanda rushing toward her with a piece of paper.

“Here,” Wanda says breathlessly, pressing the paper into Natasha’s palm. “It’s my number. And my email address. And my Facebook, if you do that sorta thing. I hate it, so much drama and politics.”

She rolls her eyes, brushes a wisp of hair out of her eyes, and shakes her head.

“Anyway, I stay up late, so if you need anything--”

“Thanks, Wanda. For everything. I almost feel like a person again.” She tucks the paper into her pocket and stands awkwardly in front of Wanda, not really sure how to say goodbye, after all the years between them and the kindness from today.

Wanda decides for her by wrapping her arms around Natasha’s neck, pulling her in for a hug that matches Steve’s in sweetness if not in strength. They stay there, just like that, for what feels like an hour, the whole diner buzzing and clinking and rumbling around them. Natasha tips her head on a whim and kisses Wanda’s cheek as they’re pulling away, and she’s amazed at how red Wanda’s cheeks are when their eyes meet again.

“See you tomorrow,” Wanda says, her eyes lowered, order book clutched in her hands. A smile dances around on her mouth.

“Tomorrow,” Natasha echoes, waiting a couple more seconds before she steps outside again, all the noise of the diner giving way to birdsong and the lazy rumble of cars down the pedestrian-laden street. She shuffles down the sidewalk to her Jeep, feeling lighter than she has in years, destroyed life be damned.

The house is dark when she gets back, and she spends some time turning on lamps inside and fairy lights outside, just the way her mama probably used to. She waters the plants dotting bookcases and windowsills and finds the waterhose to soak the flowers outside. The customary summer thunderstorm rolls in only half an hour later, giving the garden another bath and driving Natasha back indoors.

She takes another shower and shaves her legs and pits for the first time in a week before breaking open the first of three bottles of Jim Beam Devil’s Cut. She fills a tumbler to the brim with 90 proof liquor and takes it into the bedroom where Mama has a TV and DVD player set up.

She finds a copy of _Steel Magnolias_ , Mama’s absolute favorite movie, and she smiles to herself as she loads it in the DVD player. She settles on the bed and takes a healthy drink of whiskey before she presses play.

She’s got a few more tears in her tonight.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> almost a 10k word chapter! <3

The sky is slate grey and crowded with fast-moving, dark clouds when Mama goes in the ground.

Everyone drifts away from the gaping hole in the grass where she rests now, headed back toward their cars on the twisting gravel drive that leads up the cemetery and the reception waiting at Daisy Rogers’ house.

Natasha stays right where she is in the center seat under the rustling red tent, ignoring the workmen standing off to one side, waiting to fill in the grave before it starts to rain. She clutches a bundle of flowers she’d picked from Mama’s garden this morning, a colorful burst of hibiscus and Indian pink and bee balm and foamflower and false indigo, and stares down into the darkness where her mama sleeps. She’d been buried in her best dress, the purple one covered in forget-me-not print, and a pretty dragonfly necklace made of abalone that Natasha had found in her jewelry box.

“You never slept good, did you?” she says softly and out of nowhere, her palms sweaty where she clutches and clutches at the flowers. “Never more than a few hours a night, especially when you were really worried about something.”

The flowers blur in her vision as her eyes fill with tears, the colors all bleeding together until she squeezes her eyes shut and the tears spill down her cheeks.

“I guess I’ll always think of you as sleeping now. It’s the only way I can d-deal with this. Just to think that you’re finally getting some rest. That maybe there’s some peace now.”

She pauses, her chin trembling as she opens her eyes again to stare at the open grave.

“But that’s bullshit and we both know it.” She lifts a hand to wipe quickly at her tears. “You didn’t need to die to find peace. You already found it. You worked so hard for it all your life and you’d finally found it. You deserved to have it for so much longer. Until you were old and forgetful and it didn’t matter anymore. It’s not fair. It’s not fucking fair.”

She sucks in a deep breath as her heart hammers in her chest, in her throat. An ache settles in her chest and spreads out with hooked claws.

“I know it was your idea that I leave. That I move in with Sandy, that she pay for private school and college and law school. You acted surprised when she called, but she told me a few years ago. Told me it was your idea. That you wanted me to have a chance that I couldn’t get here.”

She has to fight the urge to stand up, to crawl to the edge of the hole and lower herself down into it, to feel the comfort of her mama’s hands in her hair just one more time.

“You broke both our hearts just so I could make somethin’ of myself. And I want you to know that I did. I made something of myself. I’m successful. I’m rich. But, Mama,” she sobs, her face crumpling as a hand rushes up to cover her face, “I don’t know if it was worth it. I don’t think it was worth it. Losing you is worse than never having all of that. And I’ll never forgive myself for it. I won’t. I don’t deserve to be forgiven for it.”

She finds herself kneeling right where she’d been imagining, and she curls down into herself as her knees sink into the soft dirt.

“Thank you for everything you did for me. I hope you were proud of me. And I want you to know that I’m proud of you, too.”

The stems are broken on some of the flowers when she finally loosens her grip on them, and her fingers ache with tension as they unfurl. She lifts her hand and lets the flowers fall from it, tumbling in a rush of blooms down into the dark earth.

“Bye, Mama,” she whispers.

Her legs are shaking when she finally stands up on them, and her makeup is completely ruined as she wipes at her face with the wadded-up, damp tissue she’d tucked in her pocket after the service. She turns to walk out of the tent and finds a small clump of bodies at just the edge of it.

Steve, Bucky, and Wanda.

Steve takes a step forward first, and Bucky and Wanda quickly follow suit. Natasha is surrounded by them in seconds, first Steve’s massive, warm arms around her and Bucky and Wanda filling in the space until she’s enveloped wholly. Cradled.

She sags against them, not fighting the fact that she needs them, needs exactly this, right this second. She closes her eyes and rests against Steve, letting out a wet sigh against his nice white dress shirt and his deep blue tie.

“C’mon,” Steve finally says after a long moment, pressing a kiss to the top of her head, “Let’s go eat us some casserole.”

She feels lost when they let her go, when Steve moves in close to Bucky and takes his jacket off to hold over their heads as it finally starts to rain. Wanda pulls a small black umbrella out of her purse like magic and opens it up to shield herself and Natasha. She wraps an arm around Natasha’s shoulders and pulls her in close, starting them down the gravel walk toward the parking lot, slow, like they have all the time in the world.

“Even the sky’s cryin’ for her, Natasha,” Wanda says softly, so close to Natasha’s ear.

Natasha can’t say anything back, can’t open her mouth and let out any of the thick, black pain that is slowly taking over. Instead, she tucks her head into the crook of Wanda’s shoulder and wraps an arm around her soft waist, trusting Wanda to lead them where they need to go.

 

The storm door clatters behind her when she steps out onto the sturdy screened-in back porch, the rain falling hard and steady outside, blurring the wooded backyard until it’s a watercolor study of green and grey and brown. She sinks down onto the porchswing, paying no mind to the creak and groan of the chains as it sways under her weight.

It just got to be too much in there, too many people looking at her with sad, helpless eyes, too many questions about her job, her husband, her big beautiful house out in California. The taco casserole and lipsmack-sweet tea churns unpleasantly in her stomach, and she wishes more than anything she had a little pot right now, just a couple of hits to take the edge off.

“Shoulda grabbed your stash before you left, dumbass,” she mumbles to herself.

She toes off her department store heels and pulls her feet up to the seat, uncapping the bottle of water Steve had given her and taking a long drink of it that calms her somewhat. She closes her eyes and focuses on her breathing, not the house behind her teeming with people who all have something to say to her, some memory to offer of her beautiful, sweet mama. They all mean well, all want to give her words like they’re gifts, something she can take home and keep. But it got harder and harder to deal with each new person who approached her, and she feels like she’s given so much of herself today that she might never get it all back.

She flinches when the door scrapes open again, letting out an explosion of conversation and laughter and dishes clinking, but she doesn’t open her eyes, doesn’t turn to look.

“There you are.”

Wanda.

Natasha looks up at her with a shadow of a smile, arms tightening around her legs.

“Hey,” she says, her voice cracking, more husky than usual from talking so much today. “Sorry I just--”

“No, I get it,” Wanda says, hovering beside the swing and glancing at the empty space next to Natasha. “I can leave you alone, if you want. Promise.”

“It’s okay,” Natasha replies, nodding at the seat beside her. “I wasn’t trying to get away from you.”

“Just the three thousand kids and the old geezers who stare at your boobs?” Wanda pulls her little purse around in front of her as she settles in beside Natasha, her simple black slip dress hidden beneath a long, fringed crochet shawl. She smells like lemons and rainwater today, and Natasha finds herself unfolding from the curl she’d been in and relaxing into Wanda’s easy warmth.

“There were old dudes staring at my boobs?” Natasha looks down at her chest that is mostly covered up by a black button-down shirt and a slim suit jacket that matches the snug pants currently trying to squeeze the life out of her stomach.

“A couple,” Wanda replies, still fishing through her purse. “Don’t worry, I pinched a couple of ‘em when I saw it. Ah-ha!”

She pulls out a cigarette case and opens it up like it’s a treasure chest, plucking a joint out of it and handing it over to Natasha with a tie-dyed lighter.

Natasha stares at her in astonishment, the question probably written all over her face because Wanda laughs, joy pulling at her pretty mouth.

“You just looked like you needed it. Go ahead. You get the first hit.” She closes the case back with a snap and tucks it into her purse.

“Oh, shit,” Natasha says on the inhale, her lashes fluttering when she realizes how potent it is. She exhales in a quick plume toward the screen, hoping the damp breeze will take the smell away fast. Wanda takes a couple of quick tokes and exhales on a sigh, both of them leaning against each other now, pressed together from shoulder to elbow with their legs sprawled to either side of the swing. “I was just kicking myself for leaving all my pot at home. I had so much shit. And I just left it.”

Another hit and she’s already feeling it, sweetly light-headed and lazy-boned and so fucking grateful for this girl.

“Wow, you must’ve left in a hurry, then,” Wanda replies, her roughened fingertips brushing against Natasha’s perfectly smooth ones as they pass the joint back and forth.

“I did. Saw them fucking in the kitchen, and I left when he went upstairs to pack a bag to go home with her. I didn’t see any reason to stay, you know? So I just started driving. It took me about three hours to realize I was leaving the state. Almost a full day to realize that I was driving home.”

“So… you just left everything behind? _Everything_? All your clothes, all your jewelry, all your books and your DVDs and--”

“Everything,” Natasha says, flicking ash into a tray sitting on the table beside her and taking another drag. “Left it all.”

“But…” Wanda moves beside her, restless in her disbelief. “Why?”

“It didn’t matter,” Natasha shrugs, staring out at the rainy early evening but she’s back there in her mind, back in California, on that day. “Nothing mattered. I got fired, and an hour later, I found out my husband was in love with my best friend. _Then_ I found out my mom died. What does it matter? What does my favorite sweater matter then?”

“I understand,” Wanda says softly.

“I told Clint to just sell it all. Just sell it. Send me a fucking check.” She takes a strong drag then, feeling it burn in her throat.

“I never thought you’d marry a Clint,” Wanda says, gently teasing, her shoulder pressing harder against Natasha’s for a second.

Natasha smirks then, glancing over at Wanda with her bright skin without a stitch of makeup, with her full cheeks and her smiling mouth.

“Is that right?” Natasha raises an eyebrow at her, holding out what’s left of the joint and waiting for her to take it. “So who did you picture me marrying?”

Wanda’s round cheeks flush pink, and Natasha grins at the sight of it.

“Oh, I didn’t mean that I really imagined you with anybody in particular,” she replies, fidgeting with the joint between her nimble fingertips. “It’s just… hard to imagine that you’ve done had this whole life I don’t know about. Known all these people and gone all these places and done so many amazing things--”

“Many less amazing things than you’d think,” Natasha interjects with a laugh.

“I mean… you lived in Cali _fornia_ ,” Wanda says, hushed with reverence. “ _California_ , Nat.”

“It’s unbelievably overrated,” Natasha tells her, settled into her high and smiling because of it. “Smog and traffic and fake body parts on faker people.”

“Canyons and oceans and all those big wide roads,” Wanda counters with a wistful sigh. “Like Rodeo Drive. Did you ever shop on Rodeo Drive?”

“Many, many times,” Natasha says, feeling weirdly self-conscious about how much money she really has. “It’s crowded and full of paparazzi and everything is so over-priced.”

Wanda doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just stares off into space with a dreamy look in her eyes, like she’s imagining her lovely, long self sauntering down Rodeo Drive instead of cooped up on an old porch on a rainy day in North Carolina.

“I missed home,” Natasha tells her quietly, wishing she hadn’t made Wanda ache for what she doesn’t have like this. “All the time.”

“Even with… all the humidity and dollar stores and stupid confederate flags and--”

“Even with all that,” she says, resting her cheek on Wanda’s shoulder as she slouches down in the swing. “There’s nothing like a summer night in North Carolina. Not anywhere in the world.”

It falls quiet between them, nothing but the rain and the creak of the tired swing and the muted sounds of voices from inside. Natasha closes her eyes and drifts, thinks she could fall asleep right here so easily with--

“Was Clint handsome?”

She stirs.

“Hm?”

“Clint. Is he handsome? Like a movie star?”

“He was good-looking,” Natasha admits. “I don’t know about movie star, but he was charming.”

“Well, he got you. He has to be gorgeous,” Wanda says, shifting on the swing and making it rock back and forth with her movements. Natasha shakes her head, silently dismissing her words.

“He’s got a great sense of humor. And he’s really adventurous. Likes to just take off somewhere when he gets the urge. He would barely give me time to pack a bag, just wanted to go, go, go.” She frowns at the thought of him, of how easily he’d made her fall for him. How effortless it had all been. “He’s a trust fund kid. Never heard ‘no’ a day in his life.”

“Hmph,” is all Wanda says, and her face looks stormy when Natasha glances over at her.

“What about you? Any boyfriends or ex-husbands? What’s your country song?” Natasha wiggles her bare toes in the stuffy, damp air, wishing she’d thought to turn the fan overhead on before she sat down and got stoned.

“Oh, definitely not,” Wanda laughs, shaking her head. “Guys are so not my thing.”

Natasha’s eyes widen as much as the pot will let them, and Wanda nearly falls when Natasha lifts up to turn and stare at her.

“Really? You’re… you’re gay?”

“Very, very gay,” Wanda replies, shifting so that her back is against the arm of the swing and one of her legs is bent in the seat while the other one drags lazily along the wood slats.

“In this town?” Natasha can’t help but ask, her eyes dragging over Wanda in a whole different way now, trying to imagine this girl she’s known since she was missing her front two teeth and trying to keep pet mice in a shoebox kissing a girl or underneath some girl or--

“It’s… hard,” Wanda sighs, tucking a long fall of dark hair behind her ear and pushing the swing a little with the tip of her sandaled foot. “I’m not exactly out or anything. Just close friends and family. But the rest of the town just thinks I’m shy or something. Always tryin’ to set me up on dates with their basement sons or divorced grandsons. It’s… awkward. Really awkward.”

Natasha hears all the words almost before they’re said, the way she always does when she’s high, but they swirl around in her head after Wanda speaks, bursting out into a dozen different thought processes at once. She realizes that she’s just staring at Wanda while it all happens, while her slowed-down brain tries to unearth questions from all her thoughts.

Wanda grins at her and slouches back further, letting her leg stretch out over Natasha’s lap, her toes pressed to the wooden arm of the swing right under Nat’s elbow.

“Go ahead,” Wanda says. “Ask whatever you want.”

“When did you know?” Natasha finally comes out with, resting her hand on the top of Wanda’s foot, her black toenails and tiny moon toe-ring hidden beneath her palm.

“What? That I was a raging lesbian?” Wanda’s still grinning and it’s really starting to fuck Natasha up, starting to make her smile for no reason herself, starting to make her forget that she buried her mama today.

“Yep,” she says.

“Hmm,” Wanda says after a deep inhale, her eyes tipped up at the dusty, still ceiling fan overhead, and Natasha can tell even in the shadowed grey light of the porch that her cheeks are pink. “For awhile.”

“Awhile.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Natasha’s hand curls around Wanda’s foot, fingers wiggling between the sandal and her toes, threatening to tickle.

“How long of awhile?”

Wanda stretches and jerks under Natasha’s hand but she doesn’t try to get away for a second. She laughs, high and bright, toes stretching out adorably as she lowers her eyes to meet Natasha’s.

“You really wanna know?”

“Course,” Natasha shrugs. “Unless this is a Britney Spears story. Is this a Britney Spears story?”

“I’ve known I was gay since I was eleven and I saw you in a two-piece bathing suit at Steve’s birthday party,” Wanda says in a bit of a rush, like it’s a long overdue confession and she was about to lose her nerve.

It’s Natasha’s turn to blush.

“...Oh.”

Wanda laughs again, quiet and self-deprecating this time.

“Yeah.”

There’s a sudden sound of knuckles against wood and then the door cracks open again. They both turn to see Bucky’s head poked out, his hair slightly frizzy from the rain, his eyes bright against the pale purple circles under of his eyes.

“Sorry, y’all,” he says like he means it. “Wanda, your phone rang, so I answered it. Sam wants to know if you can watch Dahlia tonight.”

“Oh, of course. Shit, it’s getting late.” She lifts her sandal wrap-strapped leg from Natasha’s lap and stands up after some teetering and adorable but graceless shimmying. She stands in front of Natasha now with her hair behind her ears and her shawl hanging off of one shoulder, leaving it bare. There’s the quiet sound of the door closing again, and Natasha is suddenly aware that Bucky left them alone to say goodbye.

“Thanks for coming,” she says awkwardly, sitting up straight on the swing now, twisting the cap of her water bottle for something to do. She looks up when Wanda doesn’t reply for a few beats, and she wishes she hadn’t when she sees the tears in Wanda’s eyes, how tightly Wanda is holding her chin still.

“I’ve been lightin’ a white candle for your mama ever since I heard. I’m gonna light one tonight for you, too.”

Natasha smiles, weak and defiant of the tears that burn at the back of her own eyes.

“Thanks,” she whispers, not sure how else to respond to that, not sure of the significance of the candles but she’s grateful for any good thoughts she can get.

Wanda leans over in a sweet tinkle of sound and presses a kiss to her cheek, one small, firm hand squeezing Natasha’s arm.

“Bye, Nat,” she says softly.

“Bye.” She ducks her head as the tears finally spill, squeezing the bottle in her grip so tight that it crinkles loudly. She doesn’t watch Wanda leave, doesn’t look up to see if anybody else is watching her.

She’s reminded suddenly that she has a meeting with a real estate agent in the morning, that she’s having boxes delivered so she can start packing everything up and have it put into storage, and she has absolutely no idea how she’s going to get through it.

 

“Wow. Your mama sure liked her bright colors, didn’t she?”

Natasha glances around the living room at the sky blue walls and the multi-colored rag rug that takes up most of the creaky wooden floor, at the myriad of colors in the paintings all around and the little figurines and treasures on every surface.

She shrugs, her shoulders just as tense as they’d gotten when Seth Watkins had walked in the front door with a notepad and a clinical eye.

“Guess so,” she mumbles.

“And these floors sure have seen better days.” He presses down a few times where he’s standing, the floor groaning under his significant weight. Natasha clenches her teeth.

“I’d imagine so,” she bites.

“The whole place is practically overgrown with plants. You can barely see the damn house from the street. Like a wicked witch lived here or somethin’,” he laughs, looking over at Natasha to watch her join in, but the sound of his wheezing cackle dies away when he sees the look on her face. He clears his throat and focuses on his notepad, his pen scratching away at the nearly full page.

“Well, anyway,” he says, flipping to a second page, “the sooner you can get all this stuff out of here, the better. All these knick-knacks and paintings make this place look twice as small as it already is. Ain’t gonna help our case none. Call me when it’s cleared out, and I’ll send my boys over here to start getting estimates of what all needs to be done and what kinda timeframe we’re lookin’ at. First order-a business a nice coat of paint on every wall. I’m thinkin’ something in the cream family. Eggshell? Maybe almond?”

She looks around the space again, at all the lovingly chosen wall colors, each room different, at all of her sweet mama’s little tchotchkes that she’d collected most her life, half of which Natasha remembers from her own childhood in that dark trailer.

“No,” she says.

“Oh. Well.” Seth pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes it across his red face. “I guess it could be white. Or maybe even a real light grey if you--”

“No,” she says again, firmer this time. “I’ve changed my mind.”

“Changed your mind?” he repeats, pen getting tucked behind his ear as he takes a couple of steps closer, like maybe he can hear her better. “To what? From what?”

“I’m not ready to sell just yet.” She feels better already just saying it, and all the tension leaves her shoulders when she turns to look at him, to meet his pale blue eyes that are wide with surprise.

“Not ready to sell,” he says.

“Nope. Not ready. This is my mama’s life right here. This is everything she’s worked for her whole life. I’m not about to throw it all into boxes and let you whitewash it and move some Duck Dynasty-lovin’ jackasses in her to ruin her house. No. I’m not ready.”

“What are you gonna do, Natasha Romanoff? Just… stay here?” He’s a step away from sneering, like staying in this house would somehow be beneath her.

“Well, I guess that’d be smarter than rentin’ a room down at the Starlight Motel, don’t you think?” She raises an eyebrow at him, quietly appreciating the fact that no man in this town can ever intimidate her anymore, not after the soulless fucks she’s deal with in California over the years.

“You women are just plain crazy,” he huffs under his breath, snatching the pen from behind his ear and tucking it into his front shirt-pocket and glaring down at her. “Hot one minute, cold the next. Can’t make up your mind to save your life. Think a woman could run this country with a temperament like that? Hell no, she couldn’t. Not for a single day.”

Both of Natasha’s eyebrows are up, and she has to clamp down on a sharp burst of laughter at this surprising little rant.

“If I recall, you’re not paying me,” she says. “So, I don’t have to sit here and listen to your mommy issues. Thanks for your time, Mr. Atkins. Tell your agency that I want a woman, if I call again.” She herds him back to the door, crowding him until he has no choice but to shuffle backwards.

“I don’t know if that’s how you women talk to men out in California, little girl, but in case you forgot, we don’t stand for it down here!” He nearly stumbles when Natasha opens the front door and corrals him out onto the front porch.

“Good luck with your wife,” she says from the doorway. “And with having a woman in the White House.”

He wheels around at that on the last step, glaring at her with speechless fury.

“All your balls in a jar. That’ll be our first step as a matriarchy.” She waves like she’s seeing off an old friend, ignoring the slow-shuffling grannies in tracksuits happening by at the moment, their wrinkle-framed eyes as big as saucers.

“You’re insane!” he screams back at her as he practically runs to his car.

“Balls in a jar!” she replies.

She waits until he’s backed out of the driveway and peeling away with a squeak of tires before going back inside, and the first thing she does is reach for her phone on the hutch.

 _Hey, it’s Nat. I have free mani/pedis for life at Dragonfly Nails since I gave the business to Bobbi. Wanna join me in an hour down there? :)_

She keeps her phone with her as she strips her clothes off in the bathroom and starts the shower, letting the water run and run in its slow journey to getting hot. Wanda replies before it does.

_that sounds amazing! one problem: i’m watching my niece today. is it okay if she comes too?_

_Of course! I’ll pick you guys up in about an hour?_

She puts the phone down while Wanda is typing out a reply, giving a pleased nod to the lemon yellow walls before she steps under the scalding spray of the shower.

 

She’s surprised she’d forgotten that the Maximoffs only live a few streets away from where Mama moved, and she climbs out of her Jeep in her trusty skinny jeans and thin white t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up and crunches through the gravel driveway toward the front door.

If she thought her mama’s house was a fairyland, this place is a fucking ethereal paradise. She remembers Rose Maximoff from when she was little, her meditation corner and the collections of crystals and stones and the dreamcatcher her Cherokee mother had made decades before, and it seems Rose has only expanded her beautiful world to encapsulate her entire house now.

There are fairy gardens dotting the entire yard, little tucks of flowers and tiny winged creatures on toadstools and walkways, a large zen water fountain with water flowing over carefully stacked stones, and a child-sized wooden house cradled by weeping cherry trees and blue wisteria trees just big enough for a little girl.

“She’s here she’s here she’s here!”

A tiny squeak of a voice pulls Natasha’s thoughts from the wistful thought of somehow living in that little house herself. She can hear the small thunder of feet and suddenly the door is open, revealing the cute fucking little kid Natasha has ever seen in real life.

“Are you Natasha?!” she asks, her brown eyes huge and sparkling with an unfiltered joy Natasha doesn’t know she ever felt herself, even as a child.

“I am,” she laughs, tucking her hands into her back pockets and grinning at her. “And are you Miss Dahlia?”

“She knows my name!” Dahlia yells back into the house, jumping in place a few times before a man appears and scoops her up, the layers of her tutu skirt getting caught up around his thick arm.

“Forgive my daughter,” he says, stepping back in the house to make room for Natasha to come in. “Wanda’s talked about you so much, Dahl thought you were just a storybook character.”

“Nobody has ever been that glad to see me. Please don’t apologize, it was awesome.” She steps inside and years and years of her life drop away in an instant. Suddenly she’s fifteen and Sofia Maximoff’s best friend taking refuge in Rose’s house, eating warm meals and sleeping in a heated house and getting her homework checked by Rose’s sometimes-lover Bernard, an English professor over at UNC Asheville.

“Sam Wilson,” the man says, putting Dahlia down in a rustle of taffeta and offering Natasha his hand with a warm smile. “I’ve heard so much about you, I feel like I know you already.”

Her face feels warm, and the smile that takes it over is almost shy.

“That’s… wow. I hope I don’t disappoint you too soon. Sorry if I’m being an asshole here, but are you, um. Dating Rose?” She leans back against the papasan chair that she remembers from high school, vaguely listening for the sounds of Wanda moving around the house even as she asks Sam incredibly awkward questions.

“Oh, no!” Sam laughs, big and hearty, a hand clutching his probably tight stomach. “God, no. Sorry, sorry. This is kinda a weird living situation, I know. Dahlia’s my and Sofia’s daughter. Rose is more like my mother-in-law. And my therapist. And yoga instructor. And best friend. She wears a lot of hats.”

“Sofia?” Natasha’s eyes widen as she watches Dahlia move around the living room, singing a nonsensical song to herself as she gathers random baubles to stick in her little pink purse so it’s not just empty when she goes out with Wanda and Natasha. “I didn’t, um. Wow, I had no idea. Where is she?”

It’s a question she’s afraid to ask now, one that she had assumed before had an answer like ‘touring with Jack White’ or ‘married to twin male models’ or ‘Amsterdam.’ She watches Dahlia a little more worriedly, nervous that she’s walked right into a Greek tragedy.

“Good question,” he sighs, arms folding over his chest as he turns to watch Dahlia too, a sad smile on his face. “She left when Dahl was ten months old. I came home from work and Wanda was in our apartment. Said Sofia called and asked her to come watch Dahlia for a couple of hours, but she never came home. Haven’t heard from her since.”

“Jesus,” Natasha mumbles, simultaneously furious at her childhood best friend for abandoning her family and guilt-ridden, like she should apologize on her behalf. “That’s… unbelievably shitty.”

“Yeah, well.” He shrugs with one shoulder, smirking as he watches Dahlia try to fit a stick of incense in her purse without breaking it. “It is what it is. I moved in here when she was two. Couldn’t afford to live on my own anymore. It’s been amazing, really. I know it’s unconventional, but we’re just kind of all a big family. We split the bills, take care of Dahlia. It’s such a relief to have support. I do everything I can, work two jobs, try to spend all my free time with her, but having Wanda and Rose here to help means everything. I don’t know what I’d do without ‘em.”

“Mommy wasn’t ready to be a mother,” Dahlia says suddenly, her eyes down on her little purse, voice sad and too wise for a little girl. “But it’s okay because I have Daddy and auntie Wandy and Mimi Rose, and we all take care of each other. Don’t we, Daddy?”

“We sure do, stringbean.” He smoothes a hand through the wild curls of her hair, voice so thick with emotion that it makes Natasha’s throat tight, her eyes burn. “Hey, why don’t you go get auntie Wandy in here? You know she’ll keep putting on bracelets until somebody stops her.”

Dahlia giggles and takes off at a run for the front door, her purse hitting her thigh. They both watch her go, the house suddenly quiet with a thoughtful silence.

“She’s amazing,” Natasha says into it, turning to smile up at Sam. “Really. You’re doing a great job. And… I’m sorry about Sofia. We grew up together. She was my best friend. I guess I just… I never imagined her doing something like that.”

“Trust me, I didn’t either. It surprised all of us. Broke Rose’s heart. Aw, anyway.” He scratches a hand through his short hair, giving her a smile so big she loves him instantly, wants nothing more than his happiness. “I just came home to have lunch with the munchkin. I’ve gotta get back to work. Those cars ain’t gonna sell themselves.”

“Not yet anyway,” Natasha smiles, nodding toward the door. “Go ahead. It was good to meet you, Sam.”

“You, too, Nat.” He leans in and kisses her cheek. “Thanks for letting Dahlia tag along. You have no idea how excited she is. It’s like the queen is visiting.”

“I’ll practice my wave,” she replies, grinning at the sound of his laughter even when the screen door closes behind him. No more than thirty seconds passes before it opens again and Dahlia is charging in with Wanda in tow.

“Found her!” Dahlia announces, pulling Wanda until she’s only about a foot from Natasha, and she stands beaming between them. “See, Natasha _is_ here!”

“I believed you,” Wanda says, flashing Natasha an embarrassed grin and tucking her hair loosely behind her ear in what Natasha now recognizes as a nervous habit. “Hey, Nat. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Hey, you can’t rush bracelets,” Natasha teases, taking a second to take in Wanda’s tight black camisole tanktop and her long maxi skirt covered in a dark, fantastical forest scene, the articles of clothing not quite meeting in the middle, showing off a strip of pale, flat tummy. “Let’s count ‘em and see how many there are.”

She reaches down for the most loaded-up of Wanda’s wrists, grinning at the peals of giggles Dahlia breaks into.

“One,” she says, plucking at a thin purple string around Wanda’s delicate wrist. “Two, three, four, five-six-seven--”

“Okay, okay, I get it! I wear too many bracelets!” Wanda grins at her, smirking as she tugs half-heartedly on her arm, but Natasha doesn’t let her go right away.

“You look great,” she tells her a little more quietly, finally releasing Wanda’s arm with a fair amount of reluctance. “It’s okay, I got to meet Sam and talk to him a minute. You guys have an awesome little family here.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty fond of it.” Wanda replies, wrapping an arm around Dahlia and tugging her in against her side with a touched smile at Natasha. “Thanks for coming to pick us up. Are you ready, Dahl-face?”

“Ready!” Dahlia chirps, holding up her rattling purse.

“Grab your car seat beside the door,” Wanda calls back over her shoulder on the way out. Natasha follows behind Dahlia toting her pink cheetah-print booster seat and pulls the door closed.

“This is a surprising car for you,” Wanda says after they’re all buckled in and Natasha’s turned the radio down low. She glances over at Wanda with a smile before backing out of the driveway, struggling with how much she wants to talk about.

“Well, I left California in a Porsche.”

“Por-sha,” Dahlia says quietly to herself, testing out the word.

Wanda’s big green eyes find her.

“Um, wow. So, I guess there’s a story there?”

“There is,” Natasha replies, glancing in the rearview mirror at Dahlia and then over at Wanda. “Another time, okay?”

“Sure,” Wanda says, soft and understanding. Natasha lets out the breath she’d been holding in and reaches for her phone, handing it back to Dahlia.

“Here, Dahlia. Scroll through there and find us a song to play.”

Dahlia takes the phone like it’s the keys to a kingdom, holding it carefully in both hands and scrolling through Spotify with her thumbs.

“No Elvis,” Wanda says.

“Auntie Wandaaaa,” Dahlia whines.

Wanda sighs.

“Okay, fine. Just one song though.”

Five seconds later, “Hound Dog” starts up, and Wanda groans.

 

Dragonfly Nails is just a block and a half from Daisy’s Diner, and it makes Natasha unexpectedly emotional to see it for the first time.

“I love this place,” Wanda tells her as she helps Dahlia out of her seat. “Staci was always so good at painting little daisies on my fingers for work. She was so proud of her shop.”

A tiny bell tinkles when they step inside, and a tall, leggy blonde turns around behind the counter and gasps at the sight of them.

“Natasha?! Ohmygod!”

Natasha grunts as she’s attacked by who she assumes is Bobbi Morse. She hugs her back as she’s squeezed so hard she almost squeaks, and she exhales a laugh when Bobbi lets her go and beams at her.

“Sorry,” she says, shaking her head in a rush of long blonde hair. “I just can’t believe you’re really here. Staci talked about you so much I feel like I know you. I just wanna say thank you for doin’ this. I really do love this place and I promise I’ll take such good care of it. I’ll do Staci proud, you’ll see.”

“I believe you,” Natasha replies, stepping back a step so she can look up at this girl who has to be pushing six feet, who is so earnest and excited that Natasha can’t help but smile. “It’s nice to meet you, too. So I brought a couple of friends with me, and we were thinking about takin’ you up on that mani/pedis deal you offered me the other day.”

“Of course!” Bobbi looks over at Wanda and Dahlia for the first time, and her eyes drop from excitement to something low-lashed and knowing as her mouth pulls into a soft smirk. “Hey, Wanda.”

“Hey,” Wanda says quietly, clearing her throat and holding Dahlia in front of her like a shield. “You remember Dahlia. She’s never had a manicure _or_ a pedicure before.”

Bobbi gasps dramatically, dropping down to a crouch in front of Dahlia.

“Well, you’re gonna get the full treatment today, Miss Dahlia. Why don’t you go on over to that wall and pick out a polish for your hands and one for your toes?”

“Okay!” Dahlia dashes over to the rainbow wall of polishes, and Natasha watches Bobbi’s eyes find Wanda again as she stands up again on those model-long legs of hers.

“Me and Skye and Jemma will get everything set up for you ladies, and we’ll get started in a jif, alright?” Bobbi tears her eyes off of Wanda to smile at Natasha, a gesture Natasha can barely manage to summon herself.

“Sure,” she says.

Wanda and Natasha stand next to each other in silence as Bobbi walks away, her ass high and round in those incredibly tight jeans. Natasha forces herself to smile as she turns to Wanda.

“Lemme guess. Ex-girlfriend?”

“We dated for a year or so,” Wanda says, watching Dahlia pick up each and every polish to examine thoughtfully before placing it back, label out. “She’s dating Skye now.”

“Mm,” Natasha says.

She and Wanda approach the wall of polish together, awkward in the quiet that follows. Wanda reaches for a deep teal, and Natasha grabs a bottle of blood red, most of her attention on Bobbi as she talks to the other two girls working and how often she turns to look at Wanda.

“Okay, we’re ready!” Bobbi says with a bright smile, coming over to escort them to the chairs. “We’ll take the polish off your toes first and then soak your feet for a good ten minutes.”

Bobbi’s hand clasps around Wanda’s wrist, about to pull her into the first chair before Natasha sinks down into it herself, looking up at Bobbi with her eyebrows raised innocently.

“I want you to do me, if that’s okay, Bobbi? Gotta make sure the business is in good hands, after all.” She steps out of her Converse, revealing her feet beaten-up from an Arizona desert road and her ruined $200 pedicure that she’d gotten at the salon of the Beverly Wilshire a week and a half ago.

“Sure,” Bobbi says, her smile tight as she settles onto the stool in front of Natasha. She releases Wanda who sits in the chair beside Natasha and in front of a girl Natasha assumes is Skye, and she can’t helped the pleased smile that covers her face as she settles back in the seat and closes her eyes, ready to be pampered.

 

They leave an hour and a half later with soft, freshly polished toes and fingers, and Dahlia talks about the Hello Kitty painted on her thumb nails the entire way to the ice cream shop. She had decided at the last minute to have her toes painted the same color as Natasha’s so they could match, and she walks so delicately to the door of the Dreamery Creamery that Natasha has to bite her lip to keep from laughing.

Wanda gets cookies’n’cream in a waffle cone, and Natasha just barely finishes ordering two scoops of strawberry in a bowl when Dahlia chimes in that she wants the same thing.

“Dahl, are you sure?” Wanda asks, pulling a thick pile of napkins from the dispenser. “You always like to have cereal on top, don’t you? And marshmallows?”

Dahlia turns to stare longingly at the line of toppings in their glass jars along the counter, but she shakes her head with a decisive frown, her hair bouncing with it.

“No, I want what Nat’s having.”

Natasha glances over at Wanda who is smiling quietly to herself, and she makes a decision that she has a feeling she’s going to regret.

“I have an idea,” she says to Dahlia, guiding her closer to all the coveted toppings. “How about I choose what ice cream we get, and you get to choose the toppings. How does that sound?”

Ten minutes later, Natasha is sitting in front of a behemoth sundae with fresh strawberry ice cream, Froot Loops, jelly beans, marshmallow fluff, and exactly seven cherries. Dahlia digs happily into her sundae, her pink spoon matching her fingernails exactly.

Natasha looks up at Wanda through her lashes and finds her grinning behind her sensible cone that she’s working at with slow, kitten licks.

“I’ll take your cherries,” Wanda says, offering her cone out for Natasha to put them on.

“Thanks,” Natasha says sarcastically, smiling so hard it hurts as she plunks seven juicy cherries on top of Wanda’s ice cream cone. She picks up her spoon, takes a deep breath, and digs into the sundae with as much quiet dignity as she can muster.

The seeming stars in Wanda’s eyes make all twelve-hundred calories worth it.

It’s about ninety degrees out when they get to the park, and Wanda has to wrangle Dahlia in to slather her in sunscreen. She stands still as long as she has to, but she goes running for the swings the second she’s released. Natasha and Wanda follow along at a regular pace, both of them smiling at her sugar-induced energy.

“She loves the swings,” Wanda tells her as she braces herself on Natasha’s arm to lean down and take her shoes off. “She’ll tolerate the slide for a few minutes, won’t go near the jungle gym or the monkey bars. But she’ll stay on the swings for a whole hour.”

“Well, it feels like flying,” Natasha says, stepping into the rubber mulch and helping Dahlia who seems to be struggling to get fully seated on the swing. “Right, Dahl?”

“Yep!” she sings, moving her legs a little, but her feet can’t touch the ground. “Nat, will you push me?”

Natasha looks uncertainly over at Wanda who is giving her that enigmatic little smile of hers. She shrugs and walks carefully through the mulch to sit in the swing beside Dahlia, taking a few steps back and letting go, moving gracefully through the air with no effort.

“Go for it,” she says. “I never get to swing anymore.”

Natasha places a hand on Dahlia’s tiny little back, terrified that she’s going to be the reason this girl goes flying through the air and lands somewhere horrible.

“Okay, um. Hold on real tight, okay?”

“I knoow,” Dahlia says impatiently, her little bird legs kicking. “ _Push_ me!”

She starts out unbelievably gentle, barely touching her at all just so she can gauge her own strength versus Dahlia’s actual grip on the chain. She relaxes when Dahlia doesn’t do anything horrific, just moves back and forth in a clean arc through the air, giggling when she starts getting higher.

“Higher, higher!” she yells. “Like Wandy!”

Natasha pushes harder, grinning when Dahlia shrieks with glee, her purple jellies sticking straight out as she goes flying through the air.

“Pump your legs,” she tells her, stepping back to let Dahlia maintain momentum herself. Dahlia does as she’s told, and once she’s moving on her own, Natasha finally lets herself look at Wanda.

She’s swinging amazingly high now, the chain shrieking when she nears the top, almost level with the bar of the swingset. Natasha has to force herself not to tell Wanda to be careful and focuses instead on the way the waist-length dark waves of Wanda’s hair fly after her like it’s got a life of its own, the way her skirt falls up high on her legs, revealing her tight calves, strawberry-kissed knees, and her soft thighs.

“Isn’t Wandy so pretty, Nat?” Dahlia says, her head turned to watch Wanda who is swinging in opposite time as her, her voice dreamy and admiring. “Like a princess.”

“The prettiest,” Natasha agrees, ignoring how hot her face feels, choosing to blame it on the high afternoon sun. “You both are.”

“Oh hush, you two,” Wanda laughs shyly, slowing down on the swing and bringing her feet down to stop herself when she gets low enough. She’s blushing when she stands up and gathers all of her hair to tame it, not meeting Natasha’s eyes as she nods over at the swing. “Go ahead. Your turn.”

“Oh, no, I’m okay.” Natasha folds her arms and steps back from the swing, weirdly self-conscious, like somebody’s gonna see her and make fun of her. “You go ahead.”

“Nat,” Wanda says, her voice quiet, hand holding the chain to steady the swing. “C’mon. Just for a minute. It’ll be fun. Just like when we were little.”

“You mean like on the concrete at the elementary school? I still have scars on my knees,” Natasha argues, but she steps in closer, eyeing the swing distrustfully.

“Swiiing with me, Nat!” Dahlia exclaims on her way back down before swooping back up into the sky. Natasha sighs, giving in, and the seat is still warm from Wanda’s body when she settles down on it.

She grips the thick chain in her hands and stares forward at the quiet walkway and the basketball courts beyond, completely unprepared for the sun-warmed ghost of Wanda’s body at her back, for her voice so soft against Natasha’s ear.

“Just close your eyes and trust me.”

She takes a deep breath and does just that, her lashes brushing her cheeks just as Wanda’s hands splay on her back and give her a gentle push to start out.

Natasha lifts her feet from the ground and takes off, long wisps of her hair falling out of her ponytail the higher she gets, and she can’t help but smile up into the heat of the sun as Wanda pushes her higher and higher into the sky, each touch like a year dropping off her life, leaving her feeling young and free and like an hour on the swingset can fix absolutely everything.

 

“Wanna stay for dinner? Wanda asks, as she opens the door and steps out onto her driveway. “We’re making quinoa veggie burgers and the biggest salad this side of the Mississippi.”

Natasha chews her bottom lip as she debates ordering Chinese from the Jade Dragon or eating a Maximoff family vegetarian meal and spending another two hours in Wanda’s company.

“Sure,” she says, trying not to smile too hard.

Dahlia changes into shorts and a t-shirt and insists on giving Natasha a tour of the house she’s been in a thousand times while Wanda gets all the ingredients out. Once they’ve completed a circuit of the whole place and she hasn’t mentioned Wanda’s room at all, she pulls Dahlia to a stop in the hallway and frowns down at her.

“Where does auntie Wandy sleep?”

“Oh, in the tree,” Dahlia replies, pointing somewhere vague outside.

Natasha blinks at her.

“In the tree,” she repeats.

“Mhmm. It’s big and covered in moss!”

“The tree,” Natasha says again.

“ _Yes_ , silly goose!” Dahlia sighs big and rolls her eyes, grabbing Natasha’s hand and dragging her into the kitchen. “Auntie Wandy lives in a tree like a real life fairy!”

Wanda turns from where she’s washing her hands, raising an eyebrow in question before it sinks in what they’re talking about. She looks bashful all of a sudden, and she turns back to the skillet she’s putting on the stove.

“I put some paper and crayons on the table, Dahlie,” Wanda says, pouring olive oil into the skillet. “Sit there and draw some pictures of what happened today to show Daddy and Mimi Rose when they get home.”

She plucks a knife from the block on the island and turns to Natasha with a smile.

“How are your chopping skills?”

“I’m pretty good with a knife,” she replies, taking it and starting in on the carrot on the cutting board as Wanda puts an onion, some garlic, celery, and arugula down to be cut after. “So, what’s this about you living in a tree?”

“Oh,” Wanda says with a shrug as she fills a pot with water. “When Sam and Dahlia moved in, they went into Sofia’s old room. But Dahlia got bigger and she really needed her own room, so I moved into the treehouse in the backyard. You remember it, right?”

Natasha has only been in that treehouse a few times from what she can remember. It was always Wanda’s space, where she went to dream and read and do whatever that strange little girl did with her free time. Sofia always turned her nose up at it, claimed she was too old to play in a treehouse.

“Yeah,” Natasha says slowly. “Your grandfather built it, right?”

“He did.” Wanda shoots her an unexpected, fond smile before pouring the quinoa into the pot. “Steve did some repairs and upgrades on it, and he promised that it was sturdy and perfectly safe. I have electricity, a heater for the winter, fans for the summer, a big bed. It’s actually amazing.”

“Hm,” Natasha says with an unconvinced frown, having half a mind to stop halfway through the onion and go call Steve to lecture him about letting Wanda live in a tree, but Wanda’s hip bumping gently against hers breaks Natasha from her thoughts.

“I promise it’s safe,” she says with a grin. “I’ll show you later. You’ll see.”

“Yeah, we’ll see,” Natasha replies, trying to stay a little grumpy, but the sight of Dahlia drawing her with big green circles for eyes and long drags of orange crayon for hair makes her smile.

She’s pretty fond of this little family, too.

 

The salad is just being set on the table when Sam and Rose come home. Rose takes one look at Natasha and starts to cry, silent, overflowing tears down her moon-shaped, pretty face. Natasha puts down the salad tongs and goes to her, not saying a word as she leans down and wraps her arms around Rose’s neck, burying her face in her long grey hair, breathing in the incense and herb smell of her.

“My sweet girl,” Rose whispers against her ear.

“I’m okay,” Natasha replies as convincingly as she can, holding onto Rose as tightly as she’s being held herself. “I’m okay.”

They stay just like that for a long, long moment, the entire rest of the room fading away as she’s cradled by the woman she always considered Mother Earth herself, and some of the repressed ache she feels at the loss of her own mother comes brimming up to the surface, forcing tears from her eyes and soft, gasping sobs that she tries so hard to hide.

“Shh,” Rose says, rocking her back and forth. “She’s so strong in you, Natasha. She’s right here. She couldn’t never leave you.”

Natasha nods, allowing herself a few more seconds of tears before she pulls back, forcing herself to stand up again and wipe her eyes, keeping her head ducked as she tries to compose herself.

“You will be alright,” Rose whispers, cupping her damp cheek and smiling at her with dark, kind eyes. “No matter how dark it feels, you aren’t alone. You will always have a home right here.”

“Thank you, Miss Rose,” she says, drawing in a deep breath that she lets out slowly. “It’s good to see you.”

“Beautiful,” Rose says, her face lighting up like dawn, brimming with happiness. “You are still so beautiful, Natasha. I can’t wait to hear about your life.”

“Dinner’s ready, Mama,” Wanda says, leaning down so Rose can kiss her cheek. “Dahlia helped me pick all the veggies from the garden this morning, so everything’s fresh.”

“My girls,” Rose sighs, looking between Wanda, Natasha, and Dahlia with a wistful smile.

“Hey!” Sam says with a pout.

“Oh, hush.” Rose grins as she swats at him. “Go wash your hands.”

Dinner is surprisingly delicious, and Natasha even eats an entire burger stacked high with roasted red pepper relish that Wanda made herself. She manages to avoid talking about herself too much, answering questions when they’re asked but making sure to ask a question when she’s done, keeping the conversation going and away from her. It’s just like she remembered, being here, all laughter and gentle teasing and small slips of philosophy from Rose, and Natasha finds herself dreading the moment she has to leave.

She’s just sitting back down to the table with a giant bowl of watermelon that she’d cut herself when Rose turns to Wanda with a happy gleam in her eye.

“So, Wanda, are you nervous about your date?”

Natasha sits down hard in her seat, her eyes wide. Did Rose know Wanda invited her up to the treehouse? Was that a date? How did--

“A little,” Wanda replies, spearing a few chunks of watermelon onto her plate and picking one up between her fingers. “I’ve met her a few times because she comes into the diner, but I’ve never talked to her for any length of time or anything.”

“Who is this?” Sam asks, cutting into his watermelon and eating it with a fork. “That Sharon girl?”

“Yeah.” Wanda keeps her eyes down, eating her fruit with an amazing amount of focus even as Natasha sits stone still beside her, listening. “She’s gorgeous, like. _Really_ gorgeous, but she seems really down-to-earth. I don’t think she’s taking me anywhere fancy or anything.”

“Which is good,” Rose says, tipping her glass of water toward Wanda. “You’re not exactly a fancy girl.”

“Definitely not,” Wanda laughs, squirming in her seat and tucking her hair behind her ear. “I don’t know. Mostly I just can’t decide what to wear.”

“Maybe Natasha can help you,” Rose suggests with a smile at Natasha. “All those years in Los Angeles have got to count for something. You’re probably a fashion expert, aren’t you?”

“Miss Rose, I’m in jeans and a t-shirt,” Natasha says with a hollow laugh, folding her arms up along the edge of the table and curling down a little, like she’s trying to hide.

“Oh, well, you’re in Honey Creek now,” Rose dismisses. “Of course you’re not dressed all fancy. Like this town needs anything else to talk about.”

“Sure,” Natasha shrugs, still not looking at Wanda. “I can help.”

“Thanks,” Wanda says, glancing Natasha’s way for the first time since Sharon came up.

“No problem.” Natasha grabs her fork and stabs into the melon on her plate, staying quiet for the rest of the meal.

 

Sam runs a bath for Dahlia while Natasha and Wanda clear the table, and Rose shoos them out after to do the dishes herself. Natasha says her goodbyes to each of them, and Wanda flicks on the outside light as she walks her out onto the front porch.

“Wanna come up for a joint? I’ve got some really mellow stuff. It’ll help you sleep good tonight,” Wanda says, leaning back against the porch railing and still not really meeting Natasha’s eyes.

“No, I think I’m just gonna head home. Gotta spend most of the day packing up her stuff for storage so they can come do some work on the house. I want to get it on the market as soon as I can.” She stares off past Wanda to the front yard where the sun is starting to set, the sky stained with bright licks of color.

“Oh.” Wanda sounds as small as she looks suddenly, her shoulders curled in, hair brushing her cheeks. “Well, okay. I only work half a shift tomorrow, if you need any help?”

Natasha hates herself suddenly, hates that she’s closed off like this and she can’t stop it, can’t pull herself out of it. Can’t stop feeling so fucking disappointed for no reason and she can’t stop doing everything she’s doing that’s put that hurt look on Wanda’s face.

“I’ll be fine,” she says, keys rattling in her palm. “Thanks for dinner.”

“Sure,” Wanda says, her smile small but hopeful. Natasha can’t meet her eyes, can’t let her see all the conflict swarming around inside of her. She steps off the porch and starts down the walk toward the driveway, not looking back at the sad girl she’s leaving behind, but she can feel Wanda’s eyes on her until she gets to the end of the street.

She calls West Carolina Properties when she gets home, turning on as many lights in the house as she can so it doesn’t feel so empty.

“Seth, it’s Natasha Romanoff. You can send people over the day after tomorrow. I’ll have everything out by then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [dahlia is legit the cutest fucking kid on the planet.](http://data.whicdn.com/images/109766509/superthumb.jpg)  
>     
> and [wanda's quinoa burger recipe](http://www.saveur.com/article/recipes/Quinoa-Veggie-Burger), for anyone interested. <3


	5. Chapter 5

The day starts with vodka in her no pulp orange juice, and by noon she cuts the shit and switches to straight vodka.

Some parts of the house are easy to pack up, are just magazines and wash-soft throws and chipped Dollar Store glasses, and she makes her way through the bathroom, kitchen, and hall closet before the sun gets very high in the sky.

She’s got the Lorde station on Pandora, and the tape she drags across the boxes gets messier and messier with each throat-burning drink. The livingroom takes until well after lunch, and she savors the empty, urgent growl of her stomach as she loads boxes with DVDs and framed pictures of herself at every stage of childhood, but one picture makes her stop.

It’s her with the little girlgang she used to hang out with, all of them dripping wet from the pool with Sofia and Natasha, the ringleaders, right in front. Sofia was always so pretty, never over five feet tall with dirty blonde hair that she wore as long as possible and green eyes that both Maximoff girls must’ve gotten from their father.

They can’t be more than thirteen and they’re both wearing two-pieces, Sofia’s breasts barely there at all while Natasha’s fill out the cups better than most grown women, her cleavage full and soft.

She leans against the now-empty bookcase and stares at her teen self, honestly never remembering being that beautiful, ever realizing that she was pretty. It never occurred to her.

Something in the background of the picture catches her eye, and she squints as she brings it up to her face to study it more closely.

There, just to the left of the four main girls is a younger girl, a smaller one in a blue and pink striped one-piece with a towel wrapped around her shoulders, her eyes squinted in the sun just like the rest of them, a strangely wistful smile on her face, and she’s watching the girls, watching them.

She remembers how much Wanda wanted to be involved, wanted to be included in all of their adventures. She remembers how much Sofia resented it and how much Wanda’s desperation for friendship embarrassed her, how cruel she could be to Wanda when all she wanted to do was tag along.

She clutches the picture in her hands, the frame creaking in her grip as a sick wave of guilt rolls through her.

She could’ve said more back then. Could’ve stood up to Sofia, made sure Wanda was included, that she didn’t walk home by herself in tears because Sofia and the rest of them distracted her and ran off while she wasn’t looking.

Wanda was always the sweetest girl, and Natasha didn’t try to protect her enough.

She puts the single picture back on the bookcase and stares at it a little longer until her vision starts to blur and swim. There’s a single swallow of vodka left in her glass, and she drinks it like water.

The bedroom is the hardest, and she doesn’t even pretend not to cry as she folds up her mama’s clothes that still smell fresh with laundry detergent and tucks them into box after box, all of her sparkly jewelry and her little shoes and all her makeup.

She shoves all the boxes into the hallway and turns to look at the now empty bedroom, void of anything but the furniture, the still messy bed, and the fountain trickling away on top the dresser in the corner.

It feels like she’s tearing out her own heart, one bloody chunk at a time.

She marches over to the bed and starts to strip it, deciding without thinking about it that the fountain fucking stays.

 

Steve shows up around four, still dirty and exhausted from work, but he doesn’t complain for a single second as he helps her load all the boxes into the bed of his truck and the trailer hitched behind it.

When every box is secured and out of the house, they pile into the truck where Natasha sits and trembles in place, sweat dripping down her body while she stares dead-eyed out at the sun-bleached street.

“Nat?” Steve says softly, reaching over to rest a big hand on her sweaty shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Just haven’t e-eaten, is all,” she says almost immediately, haunted by the way the house had echoed when they carried the very last boxes out, by how empty and completely void of life it is now.

There’s some rustling and then something soft’s being pushed into Natasha’s hand. Her eyes slip down and see that it’s a sandwich in plastic wrap, soft around the edges and warm from the sun.

“It’s just peanut butter and banana,” he tells her like an apology. “Bucky always makes too many for me, so I have one left over from lunch.”

The bottle of water he hands her is still cold, and she can feel the concern brimming from him, can see the worry in his blue eyes without even looking at him.

“Thanks,” she mumbles.

The storage place is just outside of town, and Natasha feels vaguely more human now after eating half the sandwich and downing the entire bottle of water. She’s rented two units, one for the boxes and another for the furniture, and they empty the truck and the trailer into one of them while a summer storm brews overhead, the air suffocating and unmoving.

It starts to pour during the last couple of trips into the unit, and they’re both soaking wet when they dash back to the truck and jump back inside where it’s dry. There’s dust on the dashboard and a Hank Williams song on the radio, and Natasha rests her head against the cool glass of the window while Steve makes his slow, careful way back into town.

“Did something happen?” Steve ventures after a long beat of quiet, his eyes on the road, hand steady as forever on the wheel.

She scoffs for that, quiet and too tired to be sarcastic. The alcohol is slowly wearing off, leaving her feeling pulled apart and hollow, like every part of her life before today is a distorted, blurry memory.

“Everything kinda fucking happened,” she finally replies, folding her arms up around her waist and curling up tighter against the door.

“I mean… since I saw you last. You seemed to be doing alright the other day, considerin’. I thought you and Wanda hung out yesterday and--”

“How the hell did you hear that?” she cuts in, looking over at him for the first time. “And so what if I did? It’s not like she’s a fucking miracle worker.”

“Bucky told me,” he says, careful, like she’s got a foot over the edge. “She asked him to work for her yesterday so you guys could hang out. That’s all.”

She frowns for that, staring unseeing at the soggy green fields they drive by.

“I didn’t know she had to work,” she mumbles.

“It means a lot to her, you being back,” he offers, a smile in his voice. “She’s been like a little kid ever since you got here. And I’m… Nat, I’m so glad you’re here. Just so glad to--”

“I’m not staying,” she tells him, feeling just as bratty as she used to when they were kids and she’d lose to Steve at H-O-R-S-E. “I have to get home. I have to find another fucking job somehow. I’ve got to--”

“You _are_ home,” he says, so soft.

“This is _not_ my home!” she yells, her voice cracking with emotion, She turns in the seat and glares at him with all of her rage, everything she’s kept in since she walked out of Fury’s office. “I haven’t lived here since I was _sixteen years old_. Nobody here gives a fuck about me. Nobody gives a fuck about me _anywhere_. I don’t have anywhere to be, anywhere that I’m wanted. I could drive right into the fucking ocean and it would take _weeks_ for anybody to--”

There are arms around her suddenly, and she sobs hard, throwing her own around Steve’s neck and burying her face there. The engine’s still running but he must’ve pulled over, the sound of the rain and the twang of the heartbreak on the radio absolutely shattering her, all of it.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, her hands turning to claws as she grips the back of his sweaty t-shirt.

“That’s not true, Nat,” he says, calm and clear right against her ear. “We love you so much here. And who cares if not everybody missed you? The ones of us who _did_ miss you love you enough for everybody else combined anyway. You hear me? You matter to me. You matter to a lot of people.”

“That might be stretching it,” she mumbles tiredly against his overheated neck.

“Don’t think for a second that you don’t have a home, or that you don’t have somewhere to go when you feel lost. You come right here. You come to Honey Creek. You come to the diner. You come to my front doorstep. You hear me?”

She nods, clinging to him for a little longer before finally forcing herself to let go. She wipes her eyes and gives a self-deprecating laugh, moving back to her side of the bench seat so the seatbelt will stop pulling against her chest.

“You’ve grown up a lot, Steve Rogers,” she says, hating the way the small bit of food she ate earlier sits like a brick in her stomach. “You were riding dirt bikes and playing XBox all day the last time I saw you.”

Steve eases back out onto the road, so careful in the rain, giving a little shrug with one shoulder as one side of his mouth tugs up into a smile.

“Yeah, well. Things happen. Life has a way of changing you before you even realize what’s happening.”

She falls quiet then, absorbing that, and Steve just lets her, waits her out, his bright blue eyes turned steel grey with the weather.

“What happened?” she asks finally. “What changed you?”

“Bucky,” he says with another shrug, a simple word that seems to hold the weight of the entire world, to hold all the meaning Steve can infuse it with, and he says it like it hurts to give away. “Bucky happened.”

A few things slide into place, missing pieces of a story falling together. She glances over to find his hands tighter on the wheel and a ghost of a smile on his face that he can’t seem to get rid of.

“Is he… are you two--”

“In love? Engaged? Yes. And yes.” He looks over with that sweet, sad smile of his, the fingers of his right hand twitching, drawing attention to how bare the ring finger is.

“Wow,” she says with a laugh, and she’s grinning without realizing it, shifting closer to him like she wants to hug him again. “That’s… I mean, I wondered. The way you two… are with each other. But I never guessed--”

“It happened our senior year. Graduation night. We left a party and went for a walk around the neighborhood to sober up. We ended up at the elementary school, layin’ on the merry-go-round. And I kissed him. I guess I’d been wanting to for years, and I finally just did it.”

“Ohmygod, that sounds like a gay Nicholas Sparks book,” she grins, turning to face him now, leaning back against the door and folding her leg up across the seat. “So, when’s the wedding? Do you have a date?”

Watching the smile leave Steve’s face is a specific, terrible kind of heartbreak that she wasn’t expecting to feel, and her heart leaps into her throat at the sight.

“It’s, ah. It’s a little more complicated than that. Buck’s family is real religious--”

“I remember,” she murmurs, thinking of the Barnes clan and their solemn faces, their disapproving sneers when they think no one is looking.

“And they don’t… they don’t exactly know. About any of it. And we can’t afford to live together right now somewhere, so we’re just… we’re doin’ what we have to do. I’m building us a house, and when it gets done we’ll--”

“You’re… you’re building a house?” she repeats, her eyes wide. “For you guys to live in?”

“Well… yeah,” he says almost shyly, glancing over at her with a smile. “Been working on it for a couple of years. It’s almost done. Just needs finishing touches. Appliances and countertops and stuff like that. I’m saving every penny I get. It’s over off Piney Grove, back in the woods a ways.”

There’s a tiny breath of a pause.

“...You wanna see it?”

 

It’s not a huge house, but the yard is nice and sprawling and dotted with shady trees as they make their way up the gravel drive. It’s white with a red door and black shutters, and the pride on Steve’s face when they walk up the steps to the sturdy porch is enough to bring tears to Nat’s eyes.

“Steve, this is… it’s amazing. Seriously.”

The inside is white-walled and bright with light coming in from all the windows, even on a rainy day, the floors a dark wood that’s been very painstakingly polished and obviously cleaned regularly, even though nobody lives here yet.

He gives her the tour of it, the two bedrooms and bathroom upstairs and the livingroom and kitchen downstairs, the back patio ready for a big grill and furniture. It’s so, so close to being done that it makes Natasha ache to think about, about how long Steve’s been working on this, how long he’s had to wait for his dream.

“Bucky doesn’t know,” Steve says out of nowhere, standing in the unfinished kitchen and staring at the big oak tree in the backyard. “He hasn’t seen it yet. Doesn’t even know I’ve been working on it.”

Natasha stares at him.

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” he shrugs, guilt tugging at his big shoulders as he folds his arms across his chest and sighs. “He gets worried about stuff real easy, and I don’t want to add this to his list of things to think about when he should be sleeping. I just want to bring him out here one day when it’s done, when it’s all ready for us and we can just move in. And I’m going to take him up to the master bedroom, and I’m gonna--”

He sucks in a deep breath, his face flushing pink as he finally tears himself out of his thoughts and back to the present. He exhales with a laugh, stuffing his hands into his back pockets and grinning at her.

“Well. Anyway. Thanks for comin’ up to see it. Not that many people know about it, and it’s good to share. Makes it feel more real.”

“Promise me one thing, Steven Grant,” she says, walking over to stand beside him so she can nudge his waist with her elbow. He smiles down at her, draping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her in for a sideways hug.

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“I get to be a groomsman at your wedding.” She grins at the sound of his laughter echoing through the empty house.

“You got it,” he promises, pressing a kiss to her temple and squeezing her shoulders so hard it hurts.

 

There’s still furniture in her mama’s home, but it feels more empty than Steve and Bucky’s place, completely void of any soul, any spirit.

Natasha sinks down onto the couch in the dark living room and stares out at the clear dusk, the sky a show of moody, muted colors with stars pin-pricked through. She’s full from dinner at Daisy’s and sober for the first time all day, and right now in the sad, abandoned quiet, she feels like the emptiness of this house is going to swallow her whole.

Her phone chimes from the back pocket of her jeans.

She finds herself pulled back from the edge of wherever she’d drifted so easily, so readily, and she sucks in a breath like she’d been underwater this whole time. She fumbles for the phone, the light on the screen blinding in the dark of the room.

_date was a bust. how about that joint now?_

 

The full moon is so bright it lights up the whole sky, making it easy for Natasha to navigate when she parks her Jeep in the Maximoffs’ driveway and heads into the woods down the foot-worn dirt path that leads to Wanda’s treehouse.

It’s just like she remembered it, propped up on stilts and cradled by two enormous, mossy trees in a clearing not far from the yard’s edge. The trees are glowing with lights like Galadriel herself lives here, and the sound of the cicadas singing from their ancient burrows is nearly overwhelming. She walks up to the bottom of the winding set of stairs and smiles up at the flower and ivy-drenched little porch, warmed already by the honey glow coming from inside the tiny house itself.

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” she calls up, her smile growing into a grin when Wanda opens the door and peeks her head out with a laugh.

“I don’t think my hair’s quite that long yet,” she replies, stepping out onto the porch and leaning down to rest her arms along the railing. She’s wearing a white cotton summer dress that reaches all the way down to her toes, the fabric so thin that Natasha can see right through the skirt where she’s backlit, can see the tiny line of her white panties around her soft hips.

She reaches out and takes hold of the railing, gripping it tight.

“Can I come up? Or do I need a password?”

“You’ve never needed a password,” Wanda says, her face shadowed in the dark, but Natasha can hear her smile. She walks up the stairs without taking her eyes off of her, and Wanda’s standing up straight ahead when Natasha makes her way across the porch to her.

Wanda’s wearing makeup, her lashes dark and long, her mouth a bright, strawberry burst of red that looks unkissed. Her hair is piled up on her head in some complicated magic of twists and braids with a few strands escaping, lifted by the breeze pulling through the warm night air.

“You look… incredible,” Natasha says completely without meaning to, and she’s too caught up to even feel embarrassed about it.

Wanda laughs, smirking like Natasha’s teasing her, and she gives Natasha’s arm a squeeze before she turns to lead her into the house.

It’s more magical inside than Natasha could have imagined, all the walls draped with massive tapestries of colorful mandalas and celestial starscapes, the ceiling dotted with firefly lights that make the whole room glow, the walls lined with shelves covered in strange collections of rocks and feathers and leaves, the one floor-to-ceiling bookcase so crammed with books that it’s sagging. There’s an old, sunken armchair by the biggest window and a sprawling mattress on the floor covered in blankets and pillows, messy and unmade.

Led Zeppelin’s _Houses of the Holy_ is playing from speakers somewhere, and Natasha is so tuned into trying to pick out which song it is that she’s startled when Wanda appears beside her with a mason jar full of baggies of joints.

“What kind of high do you want?” she asks.

“I want to melt through the fucking floor,” Natasha says.

There are plants hanging from macrame baskets from the ceiling and succulents on the low table by the bed, but it’s the small bundle of dying flowers next to two burning white candles on a shelf that draw her attention.

She walks over while Wanda digs out the right bag and leans down to peer at the strange little shelf, at the dripping candles and the strange flowers, at the photos leaning propped up against the wall: one of Natasha, and one of her mom.

“What’s… what is this?” she asks, clearing her throat when she hears how her voice cracks.

“Oh, it’s my altar. Well… one of them. It’s my altar for people who need some extra love.” Wanda’s beside her again, but this time she’s passing Natasha a tightly rolled joint and a black lighter. “And right now, it’s for you and your mama.”

Natasha flicks the lighter and inhales deep when the flame catches, passing Wanda the lighter while she holds it.

“Are you a witch?” she asks on the exhale, glancing over at the shelf just above and to the right of the love altar, standing up on her tiptoes to try and see all the little oddities collected there. Bits of bone and dried-out seeds, twigs bound up with twine in uncountable knots.

“More or less,” Wanda says, settling down into the chair near the window and lighting a joint of her own. “It’s just always been in my family. Folk magic’s what Mama calls it. Just little things to make life easier. Spells and medicines and hexes, even. Sometimes.”

“Could you put a hex on my ex-husband?” Natasha mumbles, walking around the room slowly, taking in every single bauble, every strange, unknown artifact.

“Don’t tempt me,” Wanda says darkly, lifting her legs to rest her feet on the windowsill. “I’ve got all the ingredients together. I’ve been thinkin’ real hard about it.”

“Well, I appreciate the thought,” she sighs, taking two quick drags and settling into the beanbag chair a few feet away from Wanda’s seat, sinking into it gratefully as the weed starts to cloud her mind. “So, how was your date?”

Wanda groans, her head tipping back to rest on the chair, the black velvet of her choker tightening around her neck.

“Terrible,” she says finally, lifting her head again with a sigh. “Just terrible. It wasn’t even ten minutes into dinner before she started talkin’ about guns and hunting. She asked me if I wanted to go deer huntin’ with her. _Me!_ ”

Natasha grins at how indignant she is, at the frown that’s taken over her red mouth.

“That would be a pretty intense second date.”

Wanda growls quietly, a soft-edged ball of fury in her sagging chair, and it takes three long tokes before she finally loosens up again.

“I don’t care _how_ strong and tough she is. That was her first and last date with Wanda Maximoff, I’ll tell you that much,” she declares, reaching down beside the chair for yet another mason jar, this one full of amber liquid and what looks like cinnamon sticks and chunks of fruit.

“Is that what you like?” Natasha asks, watching the long strands of ivy swaying in the basket hanging from the ceiling instead of looking at Wanda. “Strong, tough women?”

There’s the sound of a jar being opened and of Wanda taking some pretty healthy drinks, followed by some shifting in that old chair.

“I dunno,” Wanda finally says in a way that means _yes_. “I guess so. I like it when a girl takes charge, and when she can kinda… you know. Take care of me and--”

“So you’re a bottom,” Natasha says, dropping her eyes to Wanda and grinning at how red her cheeks get.

“I don’t…” Wanda starts, staring down at her mystery drink and sloshing it around gently. “I don’t really… I mean that’s not something that I--”

She glances up to find Natasha smiling at her and she slumps back in the chair a little further, sighing.

“Okay, fine. Yes, I’m a bottom.”

Natasha grins.

“Was that really so hard?”

Wanda takes a deep breath, trying so hard to hold onto a smile but it creeps through anyway. She leans forward, holding out the jar for Natasha to take.

“Have some,” she says instead of replying, her smile holding on as she settles back into the chair. “It’s apple pie moonshine that my uncle makes. It tastes like fall and it’ll knock you flat on your ass.”

“Sounds like my kinda drink.” She brings it up to her nose and smells nothing but the warm scent of apples and cinnamon, only hesitating for a second before putting it to her lips and taking a big, gulping drink.

It’s sharp with liquor but it goes down smooth, barely burning her throat at all. Her eyes are widen when they meet Wanda’s again, and the sound of Wanda’s laughter drowns out Robert Plant and the cicadas as she takes the moonshine back.

“I’m sorry your date sucked,” she says after a couple of lazy drags of her joint, flicking the ashes into a little ceramic tray next to the beanbag that is already holding a couple of roaches. “That you got all dolled-up for no reason.”

“Well, you think I look pretty. So it’s not for _no_ reason,” Wanda says, downing a bit more of her witchy apple magic drink before returning her attention to her half-smoked joint.

It’s Natasha’s turn to get all warm-faced, and she closes her eyes with a pleased smile as the moonshine and the weed come together to make her feel like she’s not in a physical body at all anymore, that she’s just a part of the chair, part of this room, part of this night, and she’s sharing it with Wanda.

“I could totally stay here forever,” she says over “Dancing Days,” absently kicking off her Converse and letting her bare feet press into the worn rug beneath them. She takes the last few drags from the joint and drops it into the ashtray, exhaling up into the air and picturing the smoke drifting up to the stars, a haze on this clear, bright night.

Wanda hums, a low, content agreement that Natasha feels in her bones.

“I wish,” she sighs, her little toes pressing to the dusty glass of the window. “I have to get up early and take Dahl to day camp. And it’s my turn to get groceries.”

There’s only a breath of pause, a quick inhale before she speaks again.

“I hate Sofia.”

Natasha refocuses her gaze on Wanda, watching the anger pull at her face, tighten the muscles of her shoulders.

“I don’t blame you,” she replies quietly, leaving it wide open for Wanda to keep talking, if she wants.

“I don’t… it’s not that I don’t love taking care of Dahlia. I do. She’s everything to me. I don’t know who I would be without her. But…” Wanda drops her feet from the windowsill and sinks down to the floor in front of the chair, leaning back on it only a few inches from Natasha.

“But _I_ didn’t choose to have a baby. I didn’t make a choice. _She_ did. And she just left, left behind the consequences of her decisions for everybody else to deal with. To clean up her mess. And people always say, ‘well you could leave. You could move out and get a place of your own.’ But that’s not the point, you know? That’s not what I mean. I couldn’t leave now, not when Dahlia needs me. Because I’m not like Sofia. I can’t just abandon people, not when they need me.”

“She was always selfish,” Natasha says, stretching her own feet out so that they line up with Wanda’s, sole against sole, a small point of contact while they extract slivers of pain from their hearts. “She was always doing stuff like that, not caring if what she wanted or what she did hurt other people. I hate that she left Dahlia like that, left Sam, but… she doesn’t deserve them, if you ask me. They’re better off without her.”

It’s quiet between them, their skin warming to each other’s, and Natasha’s words echo around in her own mind as she watches Wanda.

“You’re right,” Wanda says finally, after a long pause. “Wow, you’re… you’re totally fucking right, Nat. She would be awful for Dahlia. She would be overly critical and flaky and she wouldn’t give Dahl the attention she needs.”

Natasha shrugs, almost feeling bad for condemning Sofia to all these unknowable faults, but she knows without hesitation that they’re true, every one of them.

“Don’t feel bad for hating her. You’ve put up with her shit your entire life. She fucking earned that hate.” She flexes one of her feet, pressing on Wanda’s to bend forward only to have Wanda do the same back to her, their toes shifting together.

“She was always mean to me,” Wanda says softly, looking down at the rings on her fingers, twisting the little garnet one around her knuckle over and over again.

“I know. And I never did anything about it. I should’ve done something. Said something. I always wanted to, but--”

“Sofia never left much room for anybody else’s opinion,” Wanda cuts in with a sad smile. “It’s okay. I understand. I always understood.”

“She actually reminds me of Maria,” Natasha suddenly realizes, reaching forward to wordlessly ask for more moonshine which Wanda gives to her without hesitation.

“Your best friend that you caught with Clint?” Wanda asks, taking another drink of her own after Natasha hands her the jar back.

“Mm,” Natasha licks her lips, her face hot from the liquor, every muscle in her body loose, “yeah. She was always kinda like that, too. Bossy, impatient, cruel without even realizing she was.”

She shrugs, lazy-boned and uncaring.

“I guess Clint’s into that sorta thing.”

“Speaking of being better off without people,” Wanda says.

“Yeah,” Natasha sighs, shifting down lower in the beanbag, one of her feet sliding over Wanda’s until their ankles cross. “It’s just… Maria. She just broke my goddamn heart.”

“Nat,” Wanda whispers, lifting her other leg to stack on top of Natasha’s, cradling her ankle between both of her own.

“She was my best friend,” Natasha says, tears burning at the back of her eyes, her voice scratchy with tired emotion. “She was my best friend since I was eighteen, and she completely fucked me over. For a _guy_.”

“She definitely, definitely doesn’t deserve you.”

Natasha scoffs, about to argue but Wanda leans forward, closing her hand over Natasha’s foot and commanding her attention until their eyes lock.

“She doesn’t deserve to know you,” Wanda says, steady and clear, her eyes so bright green in the golden light of the room, framed by her dark lashes. “She doesn’t deserve your love or your tears. There’s not a single guy in the world worth having over you.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re a lesbian,” Natasha teases with a weak smile, earning a drag of Wanda’s smooth nails up the bottom of her foot. She jerks with a startled laugh but doesn’t untangle her leg from Wanda’s.

“I’m saying that because I know you,” Wanda says, smiling as they search each other’s eyes, both of them so stoned that they get lost in it, staring and staring until Wanda is a blur of colors with a red, red center. Natasha closes her eyes and keeps the moment in her mind, holding onto that look on Wanda’s face even as the room swoops and spins behind her eyelids.

“Steve told me about him and Bucky today,” Natasha says out of nowhere, her toes pinching a bit of the paper-thin fabric of Wanda’s dress between them. “Showed me the house he’s building for them.”

“He’s building a house for them?!” Natasha’s foot hits the ground again as Wanda pushes herself to sit up. Her eyes snap open to the sight of Wanda cross-legged and leaning forward, her eyes huge and red-rimmed and staring right at Natasha. “Are you serious? Please don’t be fucking with me. Please don’t do that. Are you serious?!”

“Shit,” Natasha mumbles, rubbing a hand over her face and sighing against her palm. “There’s a chance that was a secret.”

“Oh, I won’t tell. I won’t tell Bucky, I swear. I swear on my grandmother I won’t tell.” Wanda grabs Natasha’s hand and clutches it to her chest, excitement brimming in her so high that she’s nearly trembling. “Oh, wow, that’s… Bucky’s just so trapped in that house. He still has a curfew and he and Steve never get to spend time together. He’s gonna be so happy.”

There’s a glint of candlelight in Wanda’s eyes as they fill with tears, and Natasha can only lean forward and let her hand relax where it’s nestled between Wanda’s full breasts.

“S-Steve said it’s almost ready. I saw it today. There’s only a little more that needs to be done, and--”

Tears slip down Wanda’s face as she shakes her head and leans back, letting Natasha’s hand go to fend for itself again.

“Sometimes I think maybe I’m not meant to be with anybody. That I’m just kind of meant to be alone, on the sides of everybody else’s lives, you know? Watching everything. Like maybe I’m just supposed to be the one who records what life and love is. Just write everybody else’s stories while they live it.”

There’s so much Natasha wants to say that her throat feels swollen with it, her tongue thick with words in her mouth. She wants to reach over for Wanda’s hand again but she doesn’t, just wraps her arms around herself and takes a deep breath before she lets herself talk.

“Do you… do you write?” she asks.

“Oh, yeah,” Wanda says, those massive eyes serious and pleading now. “That’s all I do up here. Just notebooks and notebooks…”

It’s slow-going, but she climbs up from the floor and pads over to the bookcase, kneeling down to the very bottom shelf where there are dozens of composition and spiral-bound notebooks stacked on top of each other, crammed into every possible space.

“I write short stories and some long stories. Some novel-length. Real stories, about people. Real people. I like readin’ all kinds of stories, even fantasy and stuff, but when I’m writing…” She runs her fingers over the edges of the worn notebooks, over the bent wire spines. “It’s all life. Just life.”

“I didn’t know that you wrote,” Natasha says, watching Wanda as she stands up again and starts to walk slowly through the room, her white dress trailing along behind her like a spirit.

“I live in my head,” Wanda tells her, stopping at her crowded dresser near the window and digging an incense stick out of a long wooden box. She lights it and slips it into a holder surrounded by stacks of jewelry and makeup brushes and blows out the flame, a tiny spiral of smoke starting its journey up toward the ceiling. “It’s how I survive. How I keep from feeling lonely all the time.”

There’s a pause while Wanda runs her fingers over a ballerina figurine on the dresser, one that Natasha vaguely remembers from childhood.

“Like… I can be workin’ a double at the diner and my feet are killin’ me and some guy’s just yelled at me about his burger, but it doesn’t really matter because of whatever’s goin’ on in my head, whatever story I’m working on, whatever characters are just living in my head. They’re more real than all these people in this town. Sometimes…”

Wanda turns around, her eyes dancing around the room, and goosebumps fly up Natasha’s arms because she swears Wanda is seeing things she’s not, is feeling things she never has.

“It's just weird because I sit around sometimes and look around at all of them and I wanna yell 'Don't you all know who I am? Don't you know?!' at the top of my lungs but I can't because they don't. They don't know who I am when I'm not with them. They don't know how… how _important_ I am in other places, in... in other worlds, you know? They just don't see me. Who I really am.”

 _I see you_ , Natasha wants to say. _I see you._

“You should move,” she says instead. “Even if it’s just for a year. You could leave. Go live in New York. Go where you can find people to listen. Who will see you.”

“I can’t leave,” Wanda says with a sigh, coming back over to sit down in her chair again, perching on the edge of it and leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. “There’s too much at stake here. People need me here. It’s not just about me.”

“And…” She shrugs, meeting Natasha’s eyes with a half-smile. “I do love it here. I love the mountains. The river and the woods and the deer that walk by right down there under my house. And what the town looks like real early in the morning and late at night, like some perfect, abandoned place in a book. And when we have the fall festival and the streets are all crowded and there’s just so many people, and you swear you didn’t know they all even existed but then you realize you know all of ‘em, every single face.”

Her smile fades away as candlelight flickers in her eyes, catching the faintest shimmer of tears.

“Did you miss us?” she asks softly, like maybe she doesn’t really want to know the answer. “When you left?”

“So much,” Natasha says, immediate, honest. “It was… that first year was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. All I wanted to do was come home. I daydreamed about just walking home. Walking and walking until I couldn’t even feel my feet and I’d look up and be back in front of the trailer, and Mama would come out and see me there and be so glad to--”

She shakes her head, biting her lips hard as she stops the train of thought.

“I’m so glad you did it though,” Wanda tells her with an encouraging smile. “That you went and got a good education, that your aunt paid for you to go to a good college and law school. You went out to California and you made a life for yourself. _You_ did that.”

“California,” Natasha sighs, swallowing around the lump in her throat as a dull ache spreads in her chest. “I used to say it like that, too. Like it was all Disneyland and full of magic or something. But I swear it’s like... people in California don't care what your last name is. Not the same way they do here. you know? Here there's a line, a branch. A... a root. Having the last name you do _means_ something. It matters that I'm a Romanoff here. It matters that you're a Maximoff. It matters because it means we have a story. We have something to look back to. In California, roads kind of disappear the second you drive over them.”

Wanda hums in a way that feels like deep, true understanding, that makes Natasha look back up at her and _see_ her, see Wanda seeing her right back, like there are invisible, silken threads slipping out of their bodies and reaching for each other, sewing them up, connecting them.

“I’ll have to come visit you,” Wanda says, too drunk or too high to bother hiding the sadness in her voice. “After you get settled back down again out there.”

Natasha feels the pain in those words like it’s been injected into her veins, and she can only watch as Wanda stands up again and heads back to the dresser that is overflowing with soft, thin fabrics and topped with sweet-smelling strawberry incense.

She wants to deny that she’s going back, wants to comfort Wanda somehow, but she can’t find any words that aren’t lies.

She’s playing five different versions of possible conversations in her mind when she realizes that Wanda is pulling her dress off over her head, leaving her in white Brazilian-cut panties and a white bra and absolutely knocking any possible words out of Natasha’s mouth.

She’s seen women without their clothes on, dozens probably, but somehow just seeing the back of Wanda Maximoff in her bra and panties makes Natasha feel like she’s seeing another person naked for the very first time.

Natasha watches, too stoned to be self-aware enough to look away, as Wanda reaches back to unhook her bra and tug it off, leaving her tan, beauty mark-kissed back bare as she leans down to pull a night dress out of the bottom drawer. Natasha can only see the side of one of her breasts, soft-skinned and heavy and firm, but it’s enough to make her suck in a quick breath and close her eyes as Wanda pulls the dress down over her head and smoothes it down her body. Natasha sinks down to curl up on the floor, her head propped up on her hand.

Wanda is back and sitting closer than ever when Natasha opens her eyes again, all the lights out except a single, low-lit lantern by the bed.

“I just can’t believe you’re here,” Wanda sighs, lowering herself down to the rug-softened floor, her little dress slipping up to show off the whole, glorious line of her legs. “That you’re just… here in Honey Creek again. There’s just so many memories here. So much we did. You know?”

“I always wanted to bring Clint back here,” Natasha says, stretching out her short legs, her toes brushing Wanda’s smooth thigh. “Just to show him where I grew up, show him the lake and the mountains, the backroad that takes you to where I used to live with Mama.”

“Why didn’t you?” Wanda asks, head tipped to one side, completely focused on Natasha.

“I dunno,” she mumbles, eyes cutting down to her hands, so tired from having worked all day, so empty. “I guess I was just afraid he’d think it was dumb. He grew up in Calabasas. Trust fund kid. This place would be a joke to him.”

“But it’s _yours_. It’s your home. _That’s_ why he should care.” Wanda’s leaning forward again, so earnest and intent that Natasha feels unworthy of the energy it has to be taking. “Doesn't it seem like all the places and people that matter to you should matter to everyone? Like... everyone should know these streets. Right? That backroad should _mean_ something to everyone, because of what it means to you. They should be reverent drivin' on it. Respectful because of how you feel when you drive down it. The place you lost your virginity should be legend to the world, because you remember it right down to the very last detail. Your favorite song should be the song that makes everybody in the whole party just shut up and listen and _feel._ ”

Natasha smiles, her eyelids heavy as boulders. She feels like liquid, like she’s melted into the rug underneath her. Her hand is asleep where it keeps her head propped up but she doesn’t care. Wanda’s eyes are burning bright with weed and passion about what she’s saying, and there isn’t a star in the sky brighter than that.

“What’s your favorite song?”

Wanda stirs at that, as if she’s just remembered that Natasha’s there at all. Their eyes catch for a second and they share a smile, a lazy, indulgent one. And then Wanda’s up, crawling across the treehouse floor and snatching up her laptop from where it rests on a couple of pillows on the bed, bringing those pillows and a blanket back with her. The light moves from just the lantern and the moon to artificial when she opens the computer up, her eyes flying across the blue-white light of the screen. She looks triumphant and then scoots back toward Natasha, setting the computer aside to meet her eyes again.

“Okay, this song.” she takes a deep breath like she’s about to start meditating, or maybe go underwater. She closes her eyes and then opens them again after a few beats. “It was written by Steve Young, who was part of the whole outlaw country movement.” She looks to Natasha for confirmation that she’s following along and only continues when she’s gotten a nod. “And it’s been performed by tons of people over the years, but the best version, the very, very best one, was recorded by The Eagles at a concert in 1980 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.”

Natasha raises her eyebrows at that and then blinks a few times, trying to retain any of that information while at the same time trying to convey to Wanda that it’s maybe not the most necessary of things to be telling a very high person.

“Anyway,” Wanda says, giving a little self-deprecating laugh and a pony shake of her head. “You’ve probably heard it a few times over your life. It’s... the harmonies. Jesus fucking Christ. This song literally makes my ears tingle. I can _feel_ it!” She beams at Natasha. “It makes me feel like... like I want to scream every word from the highest point on earth. It makes me want to jump and spin and... and bite the words. Their _voices_. God, I just--”

“Wand?”

Wanda stops mid-sentence, her breath still in her lungs. She exhales quickly. “Yeah?”

“Play me the song, doll.”

Wanda pinks just a little in the darkness, for the pet name or maybe the reminder that she’s a ranter, Natasha doesn’t exactly know.

“Okay,” she says softly, reaching over to turn the volume way up on her computer and then to push play. She moves to lay back down next to Natasha, her head just barely propped up on the edge of a pillow, her shoulder ghosting Natasha’s chest and Natasha has the perfect three-quarter view of Wanda’s face, of every single change of emotion that comes over it when the song starts.

She gets it. She gets it immediately, the strength of the harmonies and the words. There are stars in the southern sky, God, yes. She feels her chest expanding with some unknown feeling, her heart picking up speed along with the guitar. She feels the need to close her eyes and experience each note and image that comes along but she’s enrapt by Wanda’s face, the small curve of her nose scrunched up right along with her eyebrows, looking pained but Natasha knows better; Wanda’s feeling everything possible to the very largest extent she can right now. The voices echo off the wood in their small room here in the tree, filling the summer night air and making everything feel so much bigger, so much more important, like the night will be carved into stone by the end. Saved forever, every moment.

Natasha watches as Wanda sings along, sings _and I have loved you wild_ and thinks yes, yes, I have. She wants to reach over and spread her tired palm over Wanda’s soft chest and feel her heart hammering around in there, feel the warmth of her and every drop of her passion for the song, for life. She feels it for everything and Natasha wants to be a part of that, she wants to feel even an ounce of that. Then she realizes that she is. Right here. She’s feeling it with her.

"Seven Bridges Road" ends with applause and Wanda’s eyes open and Natasha can’t help the small gasp that escapes her lips when she sees the faint, silvery tracks of tears on Wanda’s cheeks. She reaches over, can’t help it, and thumbs one of them away, letting her hand linger there for just a second, just long enough for their eyes to meet while they’re still touching like this. Wanda smiles, soft and starlit, and lets out a breath that she’d apparently been holding.

“Favorite song in the world.”

Natasha reaches over to close the computer before another song starts up, disrupting the beautiful echo of the one that just ended. Wanda stretches out alongside Natasha just as Natasha drags the blanket over their bodies, uniting them under cotton and softness that smells like it was dried in the sun.

Wanda’s eyes are glowing in the darkness and wide as the full Strawberry Moon outside, and Natasha would almost swear that Wanda has put her under a spell.

“Where did she touch you?” she whispers, her hands being good and still under the blanket, for now. “Sharon. Where did she touch you tonight?”

“My face,” Wanda says, so soft they’re hardly words at all. “My cheek.”

Natasha unearths a hand and drags the backs of her fingers over Wanda’s cheek, watching the way her lashes flutter and marveling at the softness, at how different it is to touch a girl like this.

“Where else?”

“M-my hand. She held my hand.” There’s a slight movement and Wanda’s hand is there, palm out, fingers parted and waiting for when Natasha is done stroking her cheek.

Wanda’s fingers are surprisingly bare of rings, and they’re long and slender and tuck in perfectly beside her own when she laces them together, palms lining up and nestling. Their hands come to rest between them on the pillows, and Natasha can’t help but smile at the dreamy-eyed look on Wanda’s face.

“Did she kiss you?”

Wanda swallows, loud and dry in the quiet, and her lashes flutter but she doesn’t blink.

“No,” she whispers.

“Damn,” Natasha murmurs, one side of her mouth tugging up in a smile. Wanda lets out a breath of laughter, feather-soft and small, and nestles closer to Natasha, her body so solid and so unbelievably warm.

Wanda lowers her head and tucks it in under Natasha’s chin, the gentle rustle of her breathing so intimate in the crook of Natasha’s neck. She presses a kiss to Wanda’s hairline and closes her eyes, breathing in the smell of this girl on this night, so close she can feel Wanda’s heartbeat.

She falls asleep still not convinced she’s not already dreaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you're reading this and enjoying it, i beg you to please leave a comment and let me know. writing a rarepair is a pretty thankless hobby, and it would mean a lot to me to know that there are people out there actually reading this. thanks & love y'all<33


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for your patience with me xo

A touch as soft as Mama’s wakes her.

“Nat?” Low, honey voice, fresh air moving warm in a breeze. Four fingertips on her cheek.

Natasha opens her eyes to Wanda’s face, scrubbed clean, moss green eyes focused on her with a gentle smile.

“Didn’t wanna leave without sayin’ goodbye. I’ve gotta take Dahl to daycamp and run to the Food Lion before work. You need anything?”

“What time is it?” Natasha mumbles, feeling a little hungover and more upset than is rational that Wanda is leaving.

“Quarter’ta eight. You don’t have to get up now. Stay and rest.” There’s that voice again, that sweet mothering voice that makes Natasha relax, makes her eyes slip closed again as Wanda’s fingers sift through her bed-tangled hair. “You’re in my bed, and you don’t have to leave ‘til you want to. There’s water in that cooler right next to the--”

“Come back to bed,” Natasha says, deep and gravelly, her hand closing around Wanda’s bicep and tugging.

“God, don’t you say that to me,” Wanda laughs. Her arm slides in Natasha’s grip until their fingers tangle together. “I go into work at eleven. Come see me when you get up and I’ll feed you good and proper, okay?”

“Take such good care of me.” Natasha sighs, giving Wanda’s hand a squeeze and letting her go finally. Wanda stays quiet but she keeps petting Natasha’s hair back, the birds and the breeze making this feel like a home Natasha’s never known but has always needed.

“I’m tryin’,” Wanda says at last, so soft Natasha barely hears it over the morning. Lips against her forehead, full and soft, and her chest tightens for the sweetness. “I’ll see you later.”

There’s a rustle of movement, the soft pat of sandaled feet on sturdy wood, and Wanda’s gone. Natasha sighs, aching all over from the kick in the ass the moonshine gave her and from the unfinished feeling of whatever happened between her and Wanda last night.

She turns over onto her side under the worn quilt, her face mostly buried in Wanda’s sweet-smelling pillow. It’s incredible what a scent can do, how completely it can call up all your other senses until there’s a complete picture in front of you, a vivid memory, a whole, solid girl.

Natasha’s clit is stiff already when her fingers rub over it, and she’s wet from breathing Wanda’s pillow, from the sweetness of that girl evoked so clearly. She gets into a lazy rhythm almost immediately, very practiced at rubbing out most of her orgasms because Clint barely touched her in the last months. It’s not the first time she’s thought about a girl while jerking off, but it’s the first time it’s somebody she knows instead of just Kate Upton.

She imagines Wanda last night, the way she’d been lit from behind in her white dress, the lack of space between her soft thighs, the curves of her full ass when she’d taken her dress off right in front of Natasha, like she didn’t care if she saw, didn’t care if she looked. And God, how heavy her tits had looked when she took her bra off, even just the tiny side view she’d had. How they’d feel on her face, soft nipples looking to be sucked hard in Natasha’s mouth--

She shakes all over as she comes hard, clit shuddering under the fingers smashed against it, rubbing in rough, inelegant circles. She buries her pushed-out cries in the pillow, her whole face flushed, heart pounding in her ears as a warm trickle of slick drips from her pussy and onto her tiredly rubbing fingers.

She falls asleep again with her fingers still pressed against her throbbing clit, her whole body loose and melted into the bed she could easily spend the rest of her life in.

 

Natasha drags her sorry ass out of bed after ten, and by the time she downs two bottles of water from Wanda’s ice-filled cooler, realized she doesn’t have a bathroom, and sped home to use her own, the sun is high in the sky and heating up the still air of her empty house.

She showers, forgoes shaving her pits, and throws on her new uniform: black wifebeater, dark wash skinny jeans, and slip-on Chucks. She stares at her reflection in the mirror, at her pretty-enough face with that recently-orgasmed glow about it, and finally at the heavy, bright red fall of hair framing it, weighing her down.

“I hate you,” she says to the long wet strands dripping on her shoulders. She drags it all back into an impatient ponytail, gives herself one last weary glance, and leaves the house.

She ends up in front of her mama’s nail salon, staring in at the brightly-lit main room where she can see Bobbi Morse sweeping around the tables and laughing with the pretty dark-haired girl, Daisy, Natasha thinks. Her girlfriend.

She climbs out of the Jeep, takes a deep breath, and heads inside.

They both turn like they got caught in something when the bell announces Natasha’s arrival, and Bobbi schools her face into complete professionalism the second she realizes who it is.

“Natasha, hey! Hi! We were just cleaning up around here before the afternoon rush--”

“You told me on the phone that you also do hair,” Natasha interrupts, nervousness making her sound impatient. “Right?”

Bobbi glances over at a nervous looking Daisy before passing her the broom.

“Yeah?” Bobbi ventures. “I mean, just out of my house sometimes. I’ve thought about maybe putting some chairs in here. Would that… I mean--”

“Could you do mine?” She blurts it out like a confession, her arms crossed hard over her chest, pointedly ignoring Clint’s voice in the back of her head telling her how much he loves her hair, how sexy it makes her look.

“But your hair is so pretty!” Daisy exclaims before she can stop herself. Bobbi looks over at her in horror, but Daisy powers on, taking a step towards Natasha. “Just… be sure you really, really mean it before you do this. That’s all.”

Natasha meets her dark eyes for a few seconds before looking up at Bobbi, standing over half a foot taller than Natasha but looking intimidated by her all the same.

“Can you do it?” she asks.

“Y-Yeah,” Bobbi says, recovering quickly and giving her a reassuring smile, reaching up to squeeze Natasha’s arm. “Of course. C’mon.”

 

She’s in a chair in the backroom with a towel around her shoulders and Daisy in front of her, holding up a mirror and looking anxious. Bobbi holds the thick length of Natasha’s ponytail in her hand, scissors poised.

“Ready?” she asks.

“You have no idea,” she replies, and only a beat passes before she feels the scissors’ blades close into her hair, cutting away the vast majority of it. Natasha grips her thighs, stares straight into her own eyes in the mirror, and tries not to sag with the relief that floods through her.

 

Forty-five minutes later and she’s got what Daisy has deemed a ‘lezzy pixie cut,’ short and messy and decidedly boyish, her bangs parted on one side and draped across her forehead, down one side of it. There’s not a drop of product in it and it lays perfectly anyway, making her look and feel like a whole new fucking person.

“You look fuckin’ hot,” Daisy tells her, finally lowering the mirror and taking a step closer to touch the little sideburn in front of Natasha’s ear.

“Down, girl,” Bobbi warns, smacking Daisy hard on the ass with a laugh. “Do you like it, Nat?”

Natasha nods, too emotional suddenly to even begin to try and speak. She hides her wet eyes as she digs around in her bag and pulls out a crisp hundred dollar bill, curling it in Bobbi’s hand.

“Thank you,” she manages, giving Bobbi a tight smile. “Take your girl to Asheville and have dinner.”

A moment passes between Natasha and Bobbi, one filled to the brim with understanding, with a shared loss, with obstacles that they’ve both had to clear, or are still trying to find the courage to clear. Bobbi squeezes Natasha’s hand, the bill crinkling between their fingers.

“We’re here if you need us,” Bobbi says, and Natasha knows she means it.

 

It’s after noon and bustling at Daisy’s when Natasha finally finds a parking spot a block away and walks over. She finds that she’s walking differently, with more of a swagger than a slink, that she’s holding her shoulders back and looking people in the eye in a way she hasn’t since she left California.

It’s amazing what losing ten inches of hair will do.

The smell of barbeque and fried foods hits her when she opens the door to the diner, and it’s so similar to the first day she came back to Honey Creek that she almost turns around and leaves.

Bucky is there in front of her with a plate of food, and his eyes are so wide that Natasha can’t help but laugh.

“Holy shit,” he stage whispers.

“Makin’ you think about switching teams?” she teases, reaching up to fluff her hair. His eyes somehow widen even more before his face falls into an amused glare.

“Shh,” he hisses, his hands full but he nudges at her calf with one of his dark purple Converse. “Wanda’s behind the counter, you menace.”

She grins at him, loving that he’s finally over the blushing and hiding like a little boy around her, and her smile doesn’t fade as she wades through the busy diner and up to the counter where Wanda is dropping cherries into a pink lemonade for a curly-haired girl about Dahlia’s age.

“How many’s that?” Wanda asks the little girl, dropping a final cherry in by the stem and turning expectant eyes on her. The girl pulls her glass closer with both hands and squints into it, counting in a quiet huff of numbers until she’s got it, a triumphant smile spreading across her face.

“Six!” she exclaims.

“You are so good at countin’! You win every time. That gets you a scoop’a vanilla after you eat, but only if you eat one veggie, got it?”

“Got it!” the girl chirps, and who Natasha assumes is her grandmother winks at Wanda, and Wanda turns to put the lid back on the jar of cherries. Natasha steps up to the counter and settles into a seat at the far right, content with just watching Wanda for a minute before she’s spotted.

She hadn’t really seen her this morning, and she knows she definitely would’ve remembered this outfit: a gauzy black off-the-shoulder crop top with lacy trim that doesn’t quite hide a creamy strip of belly above her high-waisted jean shorts that are rolled up as far as they’ll go, stopping just below the pockets and giving a show of tanned, soft legs that Natasha will sit here for all goddamn day.

(When the fuck did she start looking at girls like this?)

“Can I get some ketchup?”

It’s the change in Wanda’s expression that draws Natasha’s interest, the downward turn of the sides of her full mouth, the way all humor leaves her face. Her smile is polite before she leans down and pulls a bottle from under the counter and sets it in front of the girl who asked for it.

“Thanks, kitten,” the girl says with a smile that Natasha only gets a glimpse of with all the people separating them, but the two words have Natasha’s body tensing, a matching frown pulling on her mouth.

“You about ready for your check, Sharon? It’s gettin’ awful full in here, and I sure would like that seat for a new customer.” Wanda sounds as sweet as pie but her face gives away her impatience. That name raises Natasha’s hackles, and for a long, hungover minute she doesn’t know why, but then she remembers.

Sharon, last night’s date. Sharon the hunter. Sharon who touched Wanda but didn’t kiss her.

“I’ve got the day off. Thought I’d spend it here with you until I can convince you to let me take you out again.” She’s saying it so loud that Natasha knows other people can hear, are listening to this, and the flush of Wanda’s face is worried and upset instead of flirty. Nat’s standing up again before she knows it, moving slowly toward Sharon and the middle of the counter while Wanda replies.

“I already told you no,” Wanda says, finally sounding as annoyed as Natasha knows she is. “I’ve told you eleven times already, in every sweet, charmin’ way I can think of. Don’t make me be rude.”

Sharon’s pretty, lean and strong-bodied with big blonde waves down her back, but the way she leans in toward Wanda and grabs her wrist makes Natasha see red, makes her only see a threat and a scene here at Wanda’s job where she’s not out to everyone, and the protector in her makes her step forward and clamp a firm hand on Sharon’s shoulder and squeeze, hard.

“Here’s how this is gonna go,” Natasha says quietly into Sharon’s ear, staring right up into a stunned Wanda’s eyes the entire time. “You’re gonna pay your bill, you’re going to tip her twice that amount, and you’re going to leave without another goddamn word to her. You won’t show your face in here again until you’re ready to treat her like a human being instead of a prize, or I’ll pull out every nasty trick my Krav Maga instructor taught me over the last eight years, and I’ll leave you crying on the sidewalk for all your huntin’ buddies to laugh at. Do you hear me?”

Sharon lets go of Wanda and tries to stand, tries to turn, but Natasha’s grip on her shoulder tightens so hard that she stops, swallowing down a cry of pain.

“Yes or no,” Natasha grits out. “Right now.”

“Okay,” Sharon snaps, her voice tight with anger. She reaches into her back pocket for her wallet and leaves a spread of twenties beside her half-finished plate, and it’s only then that Natasha lets her go and steps back to give her room to stand up.

She’s not as tall as Bobbi but she’s several inches taller than Natasha, and her sneer when she realizes it makes Natasha want to drop her right there.

“Oh. It’s Honey Creek’s favorite orphan,” Sharon says, searching Natasha’s eyes and trying to make her step back, but Natasha doesn’t budge.

“Well, I don’t know about _favorite_ ,” Natasha counters with mock modesty, nodding toward the door. “Out.”

Sharon glances over at Wanda who is just watching them, frozen in place, her red-stained mouth parted in shock.

“You gonna let her talk to me like this?” Sharon asks her.

Wanda’s eyes flutter as she snaps out of it, and they linger on Natasha for a few seconds before she meets Sharon’s.

“Hey, you said ‘okay.’ So, hold up your end of the bargain and get out.” She shrugs one bare shoulder, ignoring the strands falling out of her twisted up braid and sticking to her sweaty neck. 

Most of the restaurant is oblivious to the exchange, but the few people at the counter are quiet, some focused on their food and some watching outright. Sharon’s glare at Natasha would melt the sun, but Natasha’s seen worse on her good days in the courtroom. Another handful of tense seconds pass and then Sharon’s moving, pushing her way through the crowd and out into the balmy afternoon.

“Thank you,” the little old man next to Sharon’s empty seat says to Natasha. “She was harassin’ this young lady my whole meal!”

“Well, I know what it’s like to have people be rude to you at work, and you can’t do anything about it,” Natasha replies, saying it more to Wanda than the old man. 

“I’m sorry your meal was disturbed, Mr. Lee,” Wanda says, pushing Sharon’s plate into the window behind her and stuffing the bills in her apron. “How about a piece of cherry cobbler on the house?”

Wanda bustles around for a few minutes, refilling drinks and bringing out dessert and salads to people all along the counter, her wide eyes returning to Natasha every few seconds like she can’t help herself. It quiets down enough eventually that Wanda comes to a stop in front of Natasha who is updating her relationship status, employment, and location on Facebook.

“Your hair,” she says softly, almost a sigh. Natasha glances up at her with a smile that tugs out a dimple, and she tries and fails not to reach up and push fitfully at the longish fall of red that covers part of her eyebrow.

“Yeah, I just…” She shrugs, looking away from those watchful eyes and focusing on the finger smudges on her phone’s screen. “Forgot how hot it gets down here. My hair’s so heavy, and… besides. Thought maybe it was time for a change.”

“You look incredible,” Wanda replies, and it’s so heartfelt that Natasha believes her. “Wow, I just… I can’t believe it. I’ve never seen you with short hair.”

“I’ve never had it before. Always had long hair, I guess. Clint liked it long so…” Another shrug, this one accompanied by another look up at Wanda.

“Well,” Wanda says, leaning forward on the counter, her breasts pushed up by it, so, so soft, “I love it like this. I’d love it if it was down to your butt or in a damn mullet.”

Natasha cracks a smile, just barely holding in a laugh.

“You say that now,” she warns her, her cheeks hurting from smiling so hard.

“Wanda, Stevie’s here,” Bucky says, suddenly beside Wanda with a flushed red face and an empty tray. “Can I--”

“Sure, hon. I’ll cover for ya.” Wanda takes the tray from him and gives him a smile. “Are we still on for tonight?”

“Yeah.” Bucky’s face gets even more red as he grins, rubbing the back of his neck as he looks away. “Thanks again.”

“Go on, shoo! You only get ten minutes.” She swats at his ass with the tray and he hurries away, disappearing into the back.

“What’s going on tonight?” Natasha can’t help but ask, taking the menu Wanda places in front of her but not looking at it yet.

“Oh, Bucky’s told his parents he’s going to some men’s bible study overnight at somebody’s house so him and Steve can, yanno.” She wiggles her eyebrows at Natasha. “And they’re gonna use my treehouse, so I’ll be sleepin’ in the main house. The couch is real comfy.”

Natasha’s eyebrows fly up as she looks behind Wanda at the door that leads to the back of the restaurant.

“Are you sure you want them, um. Studying the bible in your treehouse? Is it sturdy enough for that? I mean, you’ve _seen_ Steve, right? No way he… studies gently.”

Wanda’s nose wrinkles as she reaches over to slap Natasha playfully on the arm.

“People are tryin’ to eat here!”

Natasha grins cheekily at her.

“Can I get a cherry Coke while we’re talking?”

“Of course.” A click of ice, a drop of three cherries and the sizzling splash of soda on a hot summer day. Natasha rests her elbow on the edge of the counter and leans forward, resting her cheek on her hand, and watching Wanda like there’s nothing else she’d rather do.

“Well, I’ve got another idea, if you’re interested,” she finally says when Wanda slides the Coke to her across the counter with a red straw plunked inside. Wanda raises an eyebrow at her before taking a quick survey of the busy diner behind Natasha.

“Tell me real quick?”

“How about you come over and stay with me tonight? We’ll make a slumber party out of it.” She hopes it sounds innocent because it feels anything but. She stirs the ice and cherries around with her straw before taking a sip, watching the heat spread over the apples of Wanda’s cheeks before she recovers.

“That sounds amazing,” Wanda starts, one of her ring-laden hands splayed on the counter, so close to Natasha’s glass, “but I promise Dahlia a movie night.”

Natasha sits up straight, nodding immediately even as the disappointment flashes through her.

“I understand. No, I mean, that’s totally--”

“Nat?” 

Wanda’s got an armful of plates when she looks back up, and there’s an infuriatingly adorable smile on her face. Natasha raises her eyebrows hopefully.

“You wanna come over? Do the sleepover at my place instead? Homemade pizza, caramel brownies, all of my fun stuff in the Mason jars. Whaddya say?”

“Y-Yeah,” Natasha stammers, feeling like a sophomore who just got asked to prom. “That sounds awesome. Definitely.”

“Good.” Wanda is beaming, and Natasha swears the sky brightens outside because of it. She steps through the swinging gate and out into the restaurant, calling back at Natasha over her shoulder. “Tell Scotty in the kitchen what you wanna eat! Come by around seven, okay?”

Natasha watches her go just to appreciate those shorts fully, and when she looks back at the menu, it’s a blur of letters and words as her mind races.

 

A BLT, onion rings, and two glasses of cherry Coke later, Natasha is walking out of the diner with Steve who looks relaxed like a guy who had his dick sucked in a stockroom, who has an arm thrown over Natasha’s shoulders and is leading them down the bustling, mid-afternoon street.

She’s had a question on the tip of her tongue since he sat down beside her at the diner and inhaled a double cheeseburger and a big bowl of salad in fifteen minutes, but it’s only now away from the crowd, away from Wanda, that she feels brave enough to ask it.

“Steve?”

“Hmm?” His eyes are practically glowing blue, and his smile looks like something permanent. 

“I know you’re busy at work, but… I was wondering if you’d maybe have time to teach me some things?” She wraps an arm around his narrow waist, still not very good at casual affection because her Mama never was either, but Steve’s a hugger.

He squints down at her and she avoids his eyes, fingers tightening on his clinging t-shirt and holding on.

“What kinds of things?” he asks.

“Like… like how to build things, maybe? What you do at your job?” She says it like this is the first time she’s thought about it, but it’s been obsessing her ever since she went to Wanda’s last night.

“You wanna work construction with me, Batty?” 

Natasha stops, turning to look up at his face, at where he looks sainted, surrounded by sunlight.

“What if I do?” she asks, defensive and she can’t fucking help it, can’t help the way she’s tensed to be teased, that she feels ashamed of this, but Steve’s smile is pure kindness.

“Then I say you’re hired,” he replies. “I’ve got a belt and a hat and gloves for you, if you wanna start today? Come learn the ropes for a few hours?”

She chews on the inside of her cheek so hard it breaks through skin.

“Will I have time to shower before seven?”

Steve smirks down at her.

“Maybe Wanda’d like you all ripe and sweaty from the site. I know Bucky likes it when--”

“Ugh, shut up!” She swats at his arm, ineffectual as a fly punching a brick wall. He laughs so loud and dorky that heads turn, and he hugs her up to his side while they make their way to their cars.

She climbs into her Jeep and blasts the air conditioner, hands on the wheel as she waits to follow Steve out. She’s amazed to find that she’s feeling calm, not nervous at all about waltzing onto a construction site full of guys and not knowing what the fuck she’s doing.

She’s used to being the only woman in a room full of men, but she’s also used to knowing more than they do.

It’ll be worth it, she decides, backing out of the space and following Steve down the wide street. Even if she just makes the one thing she has in mind, it’ll all be worth it.

And besides, she’d always told her mama she wanted to learn how to build things.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so sorry it's been so long between updates. i'm back. the girls are back<3

After three hours on the work site, Natasha is so tired she can barely drag her sorry ass to the Jeep. Her whole body aches, her hands are tired, and she’s sweating like whore in church. Still, when she closes her eyes and lets the air conditioning blast over her, she smiles so hard it hurts.

That was fucking _fun_.

She shoots Steve a text to remind him to get wood for her secret future project, and she hits the button to turn on the radio, not paying attention to the fact that it’s starting to play a CD instead of whatever classic rock station she’d been on.

A song starts up that she vaguely recognizes, but it’s not until the vocals start up that it clicks.

_Even through the darkest phase, be it thick or thin, always someone brave marches here beneath my skin._

She rolls down her window as fast as she can and leans out of it, sucks in a deep breath and yells out across the site:

“Steven Grant Rogers, you sneaky fuck!”

The most awful, dorky cackle ever erupts and echoes through the half-finished bank Steve’s in, and she can’t help that she laughs, too. She rolls the window up and settles back into her seat, letting the iconic, lady lovin’ k.d. lang’s smooth voice flow through the Jeep.

She leaves the song on, and she staunchly ignores how hot her cheeks are as she plays “Constant Craving” over and over again.

 

The sun is low and honey when she makes her way over to the Maximoffs, and she realizes only after she’s walking up the steps to the back porch that she’s spent two nights in a row here for the first time in almost fifteen years. She’d showered and changed into soft black pj pants and a Judds t-shirt of her mom’s that she’d remembered from when she was young and didn’t have the heart to box up.

A low rumble of thunder sounds in the distance, and she glances back at the woods where Wanda’s treehouse is, where Steve and Bucky currently are, and smiles.

They’re gonna have an amazing night.

“Natasha Romanoff!” Rose has the door open before Natasha can even knock, and her hair is freshly down from braids and wild as a medicine woman as she stares in astonishment at Natasha’s own lack of hair. “It’s… it’s perfect. It’s exactly right, just what you needed. You’ve changed. In two days, you’ve completely changed.”

“I haven’t changed,” Natasha argues softly as Rose pulls her in for one of her crushing hugs, amazing strength for such a tiny woman. She sighs and goes limp in her arms, letting herself be hugged as hard as Rose wants. 

“Mama, let her in! She’s had a long day.” Wanda’s in grey yoga pants and a black tank top with no bra, her hair in a single long braid over one shoulder. She’s pulling a pizza out of the oven and setting it down when Natasha steps inside, and the way she turns to meet Natasha’s eyes is nothing short of electric.

Natasha lowers her eyes, shy as a schoolgirl in the face of so much intensity, and the chorus from the song she’d listened to all the way home cycles through her head for the dozenth time today.

Wanda’s there like magic, pressing a glass of ice water into her hand and standing so close that Natasha can smell the weed on her breath, the basil on her fingers, the lavender deodorant under her arms.

“Come outside with me for a little smoke before dinner,” Wanda says, soft and inches from her face.

The air smells like wet earth and ozone when they step out onto the front porch under the haint-blue painted ceiling, and they settle in close on the porch swing, so much more comfortable together than they were after the burial on a day that seems like months ago now.

They don’t speak while Wanda packs a bowl in her rose quartz pipe, and she takes a long hit before passing the still-burning herb to Natasha.

“Steve told me you got a job today,” Wanda says on an exhale, pulling her bare feet up to rest on the cushioned edge of the seat as a fat streak of lightning lights up the sky. The thunder that follows is moody and low, rumbling in from the west, pulling up a menacing rush of wind through all the leaves in the many, many trees around them.

You could set a clock by southern summer storms in the evening.

“It’s something I think I’ve always wanted to do. Or at least wanted to try. I always knew I’d be good at it. You know what I mean? Just… those things you have a sixth sense about?” She passes Wanda the pipe back and toes off her shoes to pull her own feet up, the swing rocking back and forth with no one to keep it still anymore.

The Natasha Romanoff who existed two weeks ago would never ask a question like that, would never talk so openly like this to anyone, not even Clint.

Maybe she has changed.

“I know just what you mean.” Another flick of a lighter, a deep, slow inhale from Wanda, and the cool weight of the gemstone pipe in Natasha’s tired hand. Wanda closes her eyes and lets her head fall back on the pillows in the wide swing, exhaling up at the superstitious blue above. “I always felt that way about makin’ baskets and about archery. Like it was in my bones or somethin’, you know? I just… _knew_ I could do it. Would be good at it.”

Whatever Wanda has them smoking hits Natasha almost immediately, and she finds herself leaning into Wanda’s warmth as the storm finds them, the next bolt of lightning making every hair on Natasha’s body stand on end as the rain finally, finally starts.

“Did you ever try ‘em?” Natasha asks.

“Mhmm.” Wanda pokes around at the herb in the bowl, rearranging it to get the fresh stuff on top before packing it back down. “Tried both. I sold baskets at the farmer’s market downtown all last summer before Mama’s hours got cut back and I needed to work at the diner more. Tried archery, too. Won a couple of regional competitions.”

Natasha’s eyes widen, or at least she thinks they do, a proud grin stretching out Cheshire cat wide on her face.

“Seriously? That’s… that’s fucking awesome, babe. Really. Incredible.” She takes the pipe again and runs her fingers over the rough sides of it, wondering if she’s ingesting any extra mojo from the energy of the rose quartz.

Maybe she’s been hanging out with Wanda Maximoff too much.

Wanda’s strangely quiet as Natasha takes her hit, and when she glances over to pass the pipe back she finds Wanda watching her, a smile pulling hard on one side of her face.

“Say that again,” Wanda says.

“Hmm?” She takes a heavy pull and a sup of air, holding it in her lungs as she floats and floats in Wanda’s stoned green eyes.

“What you called me.” 

She drifts back into the shapes of words still echoing on her tongue, sifting through all the ones she said and the ones she didn’t say. She’s staring at Wanda’s mouth when she comes up with one, the right one, and she doesn’t realize how close they are until their foreheads touch.

“Babe,” she murmurs, too close to focus on any one thing now except the smell of Wanda’s breath, the wetness of her lips, the secret sounds of her tongue moving in her mouth.

A loud crack of thunder startles them both, and they jump back with childish gasps, Natasha fumbling with the pipe but managing to keep hold of it and to keep it from spilling all down the front of her shirt.

“Fucker,” Natasha yells toward the sky, and Wanda bursts out laughing, leaning heavy on Natasha’s arm. She sighs and presses a too-quick kiss to Natasha’s cheek before standing up and reaching for her hand.

“C’mon,” Wanda says, tangling their fingers together and leaning back to tug Natasha up. “There are, like. Four pizzas. I don’t know what the rest of y’all are gonna eat, but…”

 

They really do eat nearly an entire pizza each, with Dahlia and Natasha basically splitting the mac’n’cheese pizza Dahlia had begged and pleaded and bribed Wanda to make. After smoking another bowl and sipping at Wanda’s peach moonshine, they’re both silly and boneless and singing along loudly to every song in _The Little Mermaid_ until Dahlia begs them to stop.

_The Neverending Story_ is next, and Natasha is nestled into a massive pile of pillows on the floor with Wanda tucked up under her arm, and even though her arm is falling asleep, she refuses to move for anything in the world.

“I get that,” Wanda says in a soft whisper, only inches from Natasha’s ear as they watch Bastian feverishly read in the school’s attic while a storm very similar to the one happening in Honey Creek beats against the window near him. “Existing in two places. You know?”

“Tell me,” Natasha breathes, her fingers working at the elastic band at the bottom of Wanda’s hair so she can brush out the braid with them and sift through all that hair like she’s daydreaming about.

“Like… I realized pretty early on that I wasn’t really like everybody else. Like all my friends and my cousins, like my sister. And so I started hiding parts of myself. Just… without even realizing it. I just wasn’t as confessional as the other girls I knew. Never told dark secrets about myself because mine weren’t the kind of secrets you tell. They weren’t the pretty secrets that somebody else would want to know. So, I just kind of… became two different people. The one inside my head, and the one outside.”

Tree limbs smack against the window as the storm rages on outside, Dahlia so enrapt in the movie and her apple juice that she doesn’t even notice, Wanda and Natasha too wrapped up in each other.

“And lately I’ve just been really feeling that. The space between those two people, between all the parts of me that I only show certain people, or nobody at all. And I’ve been wondering if there’s any way to push them together somehow, to…”

“To make yourself whole,” Natasha interjects quietly, short nails running over and over Wanda’s scalp and down, brushing out the tangles.

“ _Yes_ ,” Wanda says, the word catching on what sounds so heartbreakingly close to a sob that Natasha tightens her arm around her, pulls her closer. “To… to be whole. For once. For the first time.”

Natasha turns her head and presses a kiss to Wanda’s clean, fingersoft hair, keeping her face tucked there to breathe in her smell, to absorb it until she could find her in a dark room, could pick Wanda’s scent out of a hundred others.

“I’ve been wondering that, too,” she tells her, afraid of how exposed she feels even under a pile of handmade quilts in the candle-lit, sweet-smelling room in the safest home Natasha has ever known. “I… I know what you mean about being two people. About hiding part of yourself from everybody. It’s like… starving part of yourself, like killing it slowly. If you don’t think about it, ignore it, maybe it’ll die. But it won’t. It never does. Sooner or later, you’ll have to deal with it.”

“You aren’t alone,” Wanda tells her, hand spread out on Natasha’s opposite hip, hugged up so close that Natasha can feel her heartbeat. She dips her head down, nose dragging over Wanda’s temple and the curve of her cheek, her jaw. It feels so much like kissing her, like so much more than kissing her.

“Neither are you,” she whispers against her ear, fingers splaying so Wanda can lace them with her own.

“Shh,” Dahlia says, scooting closer to the TV, a blanket wrapped around her head, obscuring her from them and their amused smiles. 

 

Wanda helps Dahlia into pajamas and into the bathroom to brush her teeth while Natasha picks up plates and puts them in the sink. They return with minty mouths and disappear into the kitchen together to dig some kind of almond milk ice cream out of the freezer while Natasha tags along to refill her glass of water.

“So where’s Sam?” she asks as Wanda stands on tiptoes to grab three bowls down.

“Daddy’s on a daaate,” Dahlia singsongs, grinning back at Natasha and doing a little dance when Wanda hands her a bowl of ice cream. “With Miss Claire. She was a nurse at the hospital where Daddy went when he cut his hand.”

“He was slicing avocados, of all things,” Wanda informs Natasha, handing her a bowl of what looks like chocolate ice cream. “Nearly cut his damn thumb off. Claire was the one who stitched him back up. They hit it off, and they’ve been on a few dates since. He feels guilty not spending his time off with Dahl-face here, but I told him we would have a special night in together, so he went.”

They drift back into the livingroom while Dahlia loads yet another movie in the DVD player. 

“So you weren’t just letting me down easy earlier,” Natasha teases her, spooning a hunk of chocolate ice cream into her mouth and smiling around her spoon.

Wanda sits down next to Natasha and leans back against the couch, stretching her legs out in front of her, bare feet pushing forward, arching before relaxing, her toes wiggling.

“Are you kidding me? I’ve been waiting for an invitation like that from you since I was in middle school.” Wanda says it down into her ice cream, and Natasha isn’t brave enough to look over, to dare and see her face. Instead, she curls down over her own bowl and doesn’t quite manage to hide her grin, doesn’t have hair to hide behind anymore.

“Sorry I messed up your hair,” is all she manages to reply, ignoring how hot her face and neck feel. She lifts her eyes to where another movie is starting but isn’t able to look past Wanda’s adorable toes, the little yin-yang toe ring on the second one.

“I’m not,” Wanda replies, and suddenly her spoon is there in front of Natasha’s face, loaded with ice cream just like the kind in Natasha’s bowl, but they both know this isn’t about the fucking ice cream. 

Natasha looks up to where Wanda is watching her, to the cold spoon touching her lips, and it shouldn’t be so hot to open your mouth for a spoonful of dessert, but the way Wanda is looking at her makes her feel like the sexiest person on the planet, makes her lick her lips slow and wet, letting the ice cream melt on her tongue.

“Does Auntie Wandy’s ice cream taste better?” Dahlia is there next to them, watching Natasha be spoon-fed with an amused, mischievous look on her face. Natasha forces herself not to laugh as she tries to swallow, and when she’s succeeded she looks up at Dahlia with a schooled face, serious eyes.

“Your Aunt Wanda’s ice cream is the best ice cream I’ve ever tasted,” she says, settling back against the pillows and letting her shoulder press against Wanda’s. Dahlia seems to think this is hilarious, and her giggles echo around the room as she settles into the little bed she’s made at the foot of their pile of blankets, scooping up a huge spoonful of her own and eating it as she turns her attention to the movie.

“You haven’t even tasted my ice cream yet,” Wanda says right against her ear, cold lips on flushed skin. Natasha closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, letting the arousal she’s been trying to fight all evening course through her, ending in a throb between her legs.

The strangest feeling comes over her, a nearly frantic need to pin Wanda to the floor, to hold her wrists so tight they bruise and pin them up over her head while she gets her other hand down her pants, and she wants to look right into her eyes when she touches her for the first time, when she finds out just how hot and soft and wet a girl really is.

“Doesn’t mean I don’t want to,” she manages to say back, keeping her voice as quiet as she can so Dahlia has no reason to turn around. She feels the hot rush of Wanda’s breath against the backdrop of her cold mouth, and not even all of her newfound and hard-earned confidence can make her turn to Wanda, make the first move. 

Wanda’s shifting then, tugging the blanket up until it’s nearly around their shoulders, her licked-clean spoon caught between full lips. Natasha stays curled up at her side, holding Wanda’s eyes and captivated by whatever this girl has planned.

When Wanda plucks the spoon from her own mouth and tucks it under the blanket, Natasha swears she feels her heart skip.

They stare right at each other while Wanda’s hands move around in secret under the blanket, her cheeks growing an even deeper pink until she sucks in a quick, soft gasp, her lashes fluttering, bottom lip bitten between her teeth.

Natasha’s hand curls up to grip her own thigh, her mouth flooded with spit, and she’s waiting as patiently as she possibly can.

The spoon comes back after a minute, not looking much different than it had when it disappeared under the blanket, but the look on Wanda’s face lets Natasha know exactly where that spoon’s been.

She opens her mouth, tongue out the tiniest bit past her lips, looking for all the world like a baby bird, waiting to be fed. One side of Wanda’s mouth tugs up in a lusty little smirk as she brings the spoon to Natasha’s mouth and rests the curved metal of it against her tongue, dragging it over the trembling flat of it until Natasha has managed to lick both sides.

It’s faint, but she can taste it immediately: the salty-sweet musk of pussy. She closes her lips around the spoon and chokes on the softest moan as she sucks it clean, making sure there’s not a trace of Wanda left on it before she finally lets herself swallow.

“Is that the first time you’ve ever tasted another girl?” Wanda whispers against her ear, grabbing the handle of the spoon and pulling it free of Natasha’s mouth only to slide it into her own. Natasha nods, hands still to herself but only because Dahlia’s in here, because she knows better than to let herself touch Wanda right now; she knows she won’t stop once she gets started.

The spoon’s free again, Natasha’s new favorite item in the entire world, and her eyes round out when it disappears under the blanket again and she feels it touch against her own stomach, warmed by their mouths, but still cold metal on her heated skin.

“My turn,” Wanda tells her, pressing a kiss to Natasha’s earlobe and keeping her mouth there to breathe deep and steady as she thumbs the elastic waists of Natasha’s pants and underwear, not stopping until she’s got that spoon dipping down into her panties and between her legs. Natasha closes her eyes and holds her breath as the flat of it slides right over her clit, and it’s wide enough to spread her lips as it continues down and right over her cunt.

She’s tense all over just so she keeps her hips still, and she only realizes when Wanda shifts to face her more that she’s holding on tight to Wanda’s arm, probably gripping so hard she’s gonna leave a bruise. Wanda doesn’t seem to mind.

“How long’s it been since you came really hard?” Wanda asks, her voice so sweet, so earnest and dirty, and Natasha can’t even find words to give her, let alone do any fucking calculations to give an accurate answer. She tips her hips down and spreads her legs wider, silently letting Wanda do whatever the fuck she wants with whatever the fuck she wants down there.

She feels blood pulsing in her cheeks and her pussy, the heated throb matching her heartbeat slamming behind her ribs.

The spoon’s back on her clit, wet now from dipping just barely inside of her pussy, and Natasha never knew metal could feel this good as Wanda works her clit with it, digging it in ruthlessly deep and rubbing her out with it, hard and steady.

“G-Gonna make me come,” Natasha warns her in a huff of breath on Wanda’s warm cheek, and she has to clamp down on a cry when Wanda brings the spoon back and slaps it down hard against her now stiff clit, the sting zipping all through her, lighting a fucking fire at the base of her spine that starts a chain reaction over her entire body.

“That’s it, babe. God, that’s it.” Wanda sounds so enthralled, and she’s rubbing and spanking Natasha’s clit with that magical spoon until she’s coming so hard the couch shifts behind them, knocking them back a couple of inches but not managing to interrupt Natasha’s mind-melting, silent orgasm.

She melts back against the couch while Wanda rubs her down, only stopping when Natasha’s grip on her arm loosens completely. The spoon dips back into her cunt, scraping up some of the creamy slick she’d just gushed out, and she can barely keep her eyes open and watch as Wanda pops the spoon into her mouth and sucks it clean, her lashes fluttering like she’s tasting some kind of fresh, home-churned ice cream.

It makes Natasha’s cunt pulse.

“Been waiting my whole life to taste that,” Wanda says, and the way she curls up against Natasha’s chest and nurses on the spoon, their ice cream forgotten, makes Natasha realize how dangerously close she is to falling in love.

She wraps her arms around Wanda, keeping the blanket tugged up so she can slide a hand up into Wanda’s tanktop and get it on her soft tits, squeezing and kneading at them while Wanda sucks at her spoon and they pretend to watch the movie, both of them hyper-focused on the unfinished hunger between them and everything they can do when the little girl at their feet finally nods off.

 

“I’ve got her,” Natasha says when Dahlia finally droops to one side and starts to curl up on the ground. She untangles herself from Wanda and stretches her legs before leaning down and scooping Dahlia up, turning just before she disappears into the dark hallway to smile at Wanda. “Be right back.”

Wanda seems to glow all on her own from their little makeshift heaven on the floor, and the way she throws the blanket aside and lets Natasha see the damp spot in her grey yoga pants makes Natasha nearly forget her good intentions of getting Dahlia into bed all safe and sound.

She recognizes it as Wanda’s old room the second she steps inside, and the grey-blue of the walls hasn’t changed, and neither has the position of the little twin bed under the window. She lowers Dahlia into it and covers her up, soothing back her curls and trying to be patient as Dahlia drops back down into sleep. 

Rose’s door across the hall is closed, no light coming from under the doorway. She stays still in the dark of the hall for a few more seconds, feeling the first pinprick of nerves through the haze of weed and bootleg liquor. But then she remembers where she is, who she’s with, and it all falls away, leaving her with a smile and not even feeling her feet touch the ground as she makes her way back to the living room, to the girl she left waiting there.

The bed on the floor is smothered in pillows now, candles lit on tables and in windowsills and on top of the TV, replacing the blue glow of the now dark television. Wanda’s there in the middle of the pile of blankets and pillows, her hair falling around her shoulders like a shroud, her smile so soft and secret when Natasha finally gets to her, finally kneels down in front of Wanda and meets her eyes.

“I didn’t plan this, you know,” Wanda says, grinning when Natasha snorts.

“Plan what?” Natasha asks, reaching up to tuck Wanda’s hair behind one ear, letting the soft tendrils of it tangle around her fingers. She drags the side of her knuckles over Wanda’s hard nipple through the thin fabric of her shirt, and she relishes the way Wanda shivers.

“I know you’ve had a hard day,” Wanda replies, leaning over to push a few pillows aside, clearing space on the piles of blankets. “I was just gonna rub your shoulders. And maybe your back.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow.

“Want me to take my shirt off, huh?”

Wanda looks caught and sheepish, and Natasha flashes her a smile before reaching down for the hem of her too-tight shirt and tugging it up over her head, leaving her braless breasts to settle down again, heavy and swaying from the movement.

She’s always liked her tits, at least.

“Oh, god,” Wanda mumbles, her eyes laser-focused like a thirteen-year-old boy, hands twitching on her lap. “Can I touch ‘em? Please?”

“Is that included in the massage?” Natasha teases, reaching for one of Wanda’s hands and bringing it up to her chest, letting it slide over her nipple and squeeze at her breast, her fingers smaller and softer and more nimble than any that have touched her tits before.

“Definitely,” Wanda says distractedly, reaching down for a dark bottle that she pops open and turns over to drizzle thick oil over Natasha’s breasts, making her shiver before Wanda’s hands are suddenly there, rubbing it in and warming it up.

Natasha’s eyes flutter closed, and she’s barely even aware that Wanda is moving behind her, letting Natasha lean back against her chest as she massages her tits with firm, deep rubs.

“I was just kiddin’,” Natasha sighs, relaxing back against her and letting the sandalwood and jasmine of the oil invade her senses, both scents that have always reminded her of this place, of feeling safe and warm. She moans when Wanda pulls on both of her nipples, plucking at them between her fingers before gripping her tits again.

“Feel good?” Wanda asks, pressing soft, barely-there kisses along Natasha’s neck and nuzzling behind her ear, at the newly-shaved hair along the nape.

“You’re gonna have to teach me how to do this,” Natasha says, feeling drunk and high and spoiled, all of her reduced down to a warm, wet melting kinda feeling, like she’s nothing but the steady pulse of an orgasm under Wanda’s hands. “You work hard, too. Gotta make you feel good.”

She groans when Wanda’s slick hands start in on her shoulders and her neck, and she loses all awareness except for how good she feels for a long while, letting Wanda move and shift her around until she’s rubbed all the way down to Natasha’s lower back and along her strained arms. She suddenly zaps back into her body when she feels two hands slip down into her pants, both of them rubbing in what smells like coconut oil and massaging through the slightly unkempt hair of her mound and down to her pussylips and the innermost parts of her thighs.

She’s drooling now and she knows it, but she can’t do anything but rock back against Wanda and down into those hands and rub at Wanda’s soft, firm forearms, her cunt so wet now she can hear it as Wanda massages at her pussy, clever fingers teasing but not pushing inside.

“Tell me what you need,” Wanda whispers against her ear, a slick fingertip brushing at the tip of her clit while four fingers of her other hand rub over the throbbing pink of her cunt.

“Mostly clit but I like getting fucked god just fuck me fuck me fuck--”

She throws her head back over Wanda’s shoulder, arching up so hard she’s straining off the floor when Wanda pushes three fingers inside of her and starts to rub her out from the perfect angle, making her feel nice and full while she works magic on her clit, so good and so intense that it feels like a blue-flamed fire between her legs, making her right leg quiver and shake like a dog.

“God, you’re so fucking hot--”

Natasha groans over the rush of Wanda’s dirty words in her ear while she fucks her, and it’s when Wanda pushes into her g-spot and grinds in deep at the base of her clit that she locks up and feels it pulse all through her, and it leaves in a relieved gush all over Wanda’s curl-fucking fingers, soaking her panties and she’s hitching out sobs that sound anguished but feel like nothing but deep, bone-grinding pleasure.

Wanda’s mouth is all over her neck, nipping and sucking in the perfect spots that make her nipples hard and goosebumps prickle on her skin, and Natasha grins when both of Wanda’s hands resume their massage, rubbing in all the come Natasha just creamed out into her swollen, throbbing cunt.

“If you make me come again, I’m gonna pass out and not wake up ‘til morning, I’m just warnin’ you,” Natasha slurs out, grinding down against those hands and not doing a single thing to deter Wanda from doing exactly that. She feels the smile against her neck, and it’s only then that she realizes she’s never even kissed this girl.

She turns her head and catches Wanda’s mouth, the angle awkward but it’s so immediately intense, so shockingly intimate that it feels like they’re inside of each other somehow. She slides her tongue into Wanda’s lax mouth and moans there when Wanda focuses on her clit completely this time, catching it between her fingers and cupping her cunt to rub out the whole fucking thing, like she’s holding Natasha’s heart in her hand.

She fucks into Wanda’s hand, letting Wanda suck on her bottom lip and grip both of her tits in a come-slicked hand that can’t contain both at the same time, and she feels the tight throb of her clit between Wanda’s fingers when she comes a second time, making an absolute mess of her pajama pants, but she doesn’t care.

She doesn’t motherfucking care about anything that isn’t in this living room.

“Jesus fuck, doll. That was amazing,” Natasha huffs out when she finally catches her breath, every single muscle in her body going limp in the Mother Earth cradle of Wanda’s soft body. Wanda’s back to kissing her jaw, her shoulder, and Natasha doesn’t even care how slimy it is when Wanda’s hands stroke over her bare arms and wrap around her to hug her in the warmest place she’s ever been contained. 

“Sleep,” Wanda whispers, swaying so that they’re rocking back and forth, like the porch swing, like being out on the lake on a float from the dollar store in the middle of July, like Mama’s arms when Natasha would crawl into bed with her and need to hear her heartbeat after her dreams got too bad. Like all those things, only better somehow. Like this is just for Natasha. Like she’s earned this.

She lets herself slip under just like warm, dark water, and she’s never known exactly what it’s like to feel weightless before tonight.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for loving these girls as much as i do. ♥

Natasha wakes up alone, but she smells toast and hears the steady beat of a knife going through honeydew. Forcing her eyes open and letting them focus on the scene in the kitchen a few feet away confirms it, but she’s surprised to see Sam buttering the toast and Wanda fully dressed with wet hair, slicing the melon into imperfect crescent moons. The sun is blindingly bright already, and it’s quiet in the house except for the electric beauty of Jimi Hendrix coming from some speaker or another on the counter in there.

She smiles and flops over onto her back, letting the vague, open ache of being fucked the night before take over. If she was alone, she’d slide a hand back down into her pants and let the memory of it get her off again, but the faint sound of Dahlia’s laugh down the hallway wakes her up fully.

“Mornin’, sleepyhead!” Sam calls the second she sits up, making Natasha glare at him after she rubs the sleep from her eyes. He’s grinning and wiping his hands on a towel when she does, and Natasha unearths herself from all the blankets and climbs to her feet after a brief struggle. She hurts all over from all the work she did yesterday, not at all used to manual labor after years of pacing a courtroom and sitting in hundreds of meetings to get all the lies straight before each trial.

Just the reminder that she can think about that part of her life in past tense is enough to make her smile as she pushes up onto her toes and stretches, and it’s only after she drops back down to her feet and feels her tits bounce that she remembers she’s shirtless.

“Shit,” she blurts out.

“Eh, it’s fine. I live in a houseful of women,” Sam waves away, filling a travel mug with coffee from the pot on the counter and being polite enough to not watch as Nat scrounges for her shirt and yanks it back over her head.

She meets Wanda’s eyes finally, her heart racing as she does.

Wanda’s staring straight at her, eyes flicking down to Natasha’s chest where a faded picture of Wynonna and Naomi distract from the fact that she’s not wearing a bra. She feels the heat spreading from her face down her neck, but she ignores it in favor of shuffling into the kitchen and towards the smell of coffee.

“Good morning,” she finally says, directing it toward Wanda as Sam puts a mug of black coffee in front of her and motions at the sugar and almond milk creamer. She can see Sam’s smile out of the corner of her eyes, the smirk he’s not doing a very good job of hiding. 

“Sleep well?” Wanda asks, her eyes big and innocent as she sucks honeydew juice from her fingertip. She’s wearing a sundress that Natasha swears she used to run around in when she was a little girl, one that comes barely mid-thigh and has a red and orange floral print straight from the seventies on it. She’s barefoot and her hair is drying in loose waves down her back and her naked arms, and maybe it’s the fact that she’s braless under that little dress, that Natasha can see her nipples through the time softened fabric, but she’s drawn to her helplessly, forgetting that Sam’s in the room and Rose and Dahlia are somewhere else in the house.

She steps in close to her, only an inch or so shorter as she slides a hand low across Wanda’s back and settles it on her hipbone, guiding her to turn and face her. Surprise has taken over Wanda’s face when Nat looks up at her again, a pink on her cheeks that has nothing to do with the sun or a makeup compact.

“Mhmm.”

She squeezes Wanda’s hip and lowers her face to kiss the lotioned curve of Wanda’s shoulder before moving up to her jaw and her cheek. The knife clatters from Wanda’s hand to the cutting board, and they’re pressed up tight against each other by the time their mouths meet, by the time Wanda drapes her arms around Natasha’s shoulders and Nat’s hands find their inevitable way to Wanda’s ass. She knows her own mouth tastes sour and disgusting, but Wanda’s tastes like light sweetness and mint and god _damn_.

“Good fucking morning,” she mumbles against Wanda’s mouth, feeling the pantyline under Wanda’s dress and the way she unclenches the muscles of her ass to let Nat feel how juicy and soft it is, to give her fantasies all day of the way it would bounce in so many different situations.

“And I thought _I_ had a good night,” Sam announces, closing up a Moana lunchbox and grinning way too hard at them as he leaves the kitchen, calling for Dahlia when he gets deeper into the house. 

Natasha closes her eyes and rests her forehead against Wanda’s, trying to recover from the embarrassment that hit her way too late.

“Sorry. Jesus. Clearly I’m a little out of practice with playing it cool with this kinda thing.” She takes a step back and lets go of Wanda’s ass, but she’s relieved to find Wanda still smiling when they break apart.

“Go on and get in the shower,” Wanda says, nodding out of the kitchen and picking up her knife again. “I’m making us some smoothies. I told Steve you’d be in by nine.”

A glance at the fairy clock on the wall says it’s 7:32. She doesn’t ask when or why she’d talk to Steve, doesn’t ask what’s going to be in the smoothie. She just nods and holds in her stupid smile until she’s out of the kitchen and walking down the hall. She can hear Sam helping Dahlia into her jellies in her room and the sound of Rose singing along softly with Joan Baez in her own, all the noise and reminder of life nearly bringing Natasha to tears.

She finds her overnight bag in the bathroom with a mismatched set of towels on the closed toilet seat, and if she pretends for the next half hour or so that Wanda is her wife and this is just another day in their busy lives, nobody else has to know about it.

 

\--

 

She drops Dahlia off at daycamp and Wanda off at the diner, and Natasha loses the nerve to give her a kiss goodbye at the last second. Wanda hops out of the Jeep and sprints to the sidewalk, that childhood summer dress lifting in the warm morning breeze giving Natasha plenty to think about the whole drive to the construction site.

Steve teaches her how to use the circular saw to cut timber for the shed out behind the restaurant they’re building on the edge of town, and by 1pm, she’s covered in sawdust and sweat and her shoulders are pink from the sun blazing high above. She shoves the safety goggles up on top of her head and gratefully accepts the giant thermos of ice water Steve offers her.

“How you feeling?” he asks her, wiping his face clean with a fresh towel from his truck and taking the water back when Natasha hands it to him.

“Good.” Her arms are aching and her head throbs from the vibration of the saw and the constant racket of construction, but she feels useful and productive and competent, a combination she’s never quite experienced before. She’s grinning without even realizing it, and it’s only when Steve bumps his big shoulder into hers that she snaps out of it and catches his bright, easy smile.

“Yeah, I got laid real good last night, too,” he says with a satisfied sigh, barely moving at all when Natasha shoves him with tired hands where they’re slugged out in the bed of his truck, leaning against the toolbox at the head of it in the relative cool of the shade under a big sycamore. 

“Did y’all break the tree house?” she asks him, covering her eyes with the back of her arm and stretching out in the bed. Steve snorts and touches the cold thermos to her arm.

“Nah, he rode me for the most part. Kept those violent movements to a minimum.”

Natasha flings her arm from her face and stares over at him in a mix of pure amusement and delighted horror, stopped from yelling at him for oversharing by the steady thrum of the phone in her pocket.

Maybe Wanda’s on break. Maybe they’ll spend lunch talking and figuring out what to do for dinner. Maybe she’s calling to tell Natasha they just pulled fresh meatloaf out of the oven and she’s got a plate waiting for her at the counter. Maybe--

_Santa Monica, California_

She lets the phone buzz on in her hand as she stares blankly at the screen, fully aware of who’s on the other line. She’s almost forgotten his existence, forgotten the years of her life she’d shared with him. Like she’d cut the whole thing out and stitched the Before and After together, like it was never there at all. The call becomes a missed call, and the phone starts vibrating again before she can even speak.

“You okay?” Steve asks. He’s sitting up now and watching her, his eyebrows drawn together in worry. He’s too decent to look down and see who it is, to invade her privacy.

“It’s my husband,” she replies without a single inflection. She knows Clint, knows he’ll just call back again if she doesn’t answer, that he’ll keep calling all day until she picks up. Clint doesn’t do voicemail, doesn’t take no for an answer. And maybe it’d be charming if it didn’t always feel borderline abusive.

“I’ll give you a minute,” Steve says quietly, leaving the thermos beside Nat and giving her shoulder a quick squeeze before he climbs out of the bed of the truck and heads back to the site. She hits accept before it can go to voicemail again, and the silence that overtakes her when she presses the phone to her ear makes her feel sixteen and powerless all over again.

“Tash?”

Natasha stares down at her dirty Docs, at the caked on red clay from all the mud out here. Clint would be horrified, if he could see her.

“How did you get this number?” she says by way of greeting. His returning quiet tells Nat she’d thrown him off, taken whatever power trip he was going to try and use on her and forcing him to find another tactic.

“Called around. One of your aunts back in your hometown. Found a number in that notebook in your nightstand.”

A pause.

“Is that where you are? Back in North Carolina?”

“What do you want?” she replies, jumping down from the side of the truck and landing in the gravelly dirt with a crunch. She shoves a hand in her pocket and starts to pace beneath the tree, only going as far as the leaves’ shadows before she retreats. Her heart is racing dangerously fast in her chest, a steady thud against her ribcage that feels like an insistent knocking.

“You to deal with your shit, Nat. You just left. Left me with all the responsibility, with all the pressure of filing for a divorce and putting the house up for sale and--”

“Boo fucking hoo.”

The tip of her steel-toed boot connects with the trunk of the sycamore, hitting with a satisfying thunk. She pretends it’s Clint’s skull.

“You wanna be childish about this? Okay. Fine. Come get your fucking toys and go home, Nat. You’ve got books and clothes and music and jewelry and photos and letters from old boyfriends and just… a lot of fucking shit, alright? You never fucking threw anything away. And I don’t know what to do with it.”

Her first instinct is to tell him to just throw it away like she had when she left, but picturing it now, all the comfy band shirts and nice bras and read-soft books and CDs she’d lugged from place to place since middle school and lockets and charm bracelets of her mom’s and all the confessional letters from so many loves, imagining Clint just tossing it all in a dumpster without a thought makes her stomach turn.

“Can’t you just--”

“ _No_ , Nat. I can’t. I’m doing enough. _You_ fucking deal with it. It’s your shit.”

She barely recognizes the man she’d married in his tone, in his coldness. It brings her a shocking amount of clarity, removes all emotion about him from the equation and makes her voice steady when she leans back against the tree and responds just as unkind as he’s being.

“Fine. I’ll come get it. But I want you out of there. Go stay at Maria’s place for the week or something. I don’t want to see you.”

“Trust me, it’s fucking mutual.” She can tell he wants to say more, that he’s practically growling with it, but she pushes through, doesn’t let him even complete the thought.

“I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon. I’ll let you know when I’m through.”

“You’ll be through by the end of the week. That’s plenty of time. I don’t want to have you escorted off the property, but I will.”

 _I used to love you,_ she wants to say. _I shaved your face on Sunday mornings and supported all your career changes and saw Slipknot in concert three fucking times for you and held you when you cried about your dad dying and let you fuck me in the ass even though I hate it and I shared my life with you, you fucking piece of shit._

“I’ll have my own escort there. Don’t worry. I’ll let you know when I’m done.”

“That’s not--”

“If you think you’re keeping the XBox One, you’re sadly fucking mistaken,” she cuts in. She hangs up with a hard press of her thumb and stares down at the phone, the full weight of what she has to do hitting her all at once.

And she knows she’s gonna have to do it alone.

\--

The rest of work is a blur, and she only gathers the nerve to tell Steve about the impromptu journey to California when they’re walking to their cars in the early evening.

“I can go with you,” Steve offers, valiant as ever even though he’s hurting all over and tired way down into his bones, and Natasha knows he means it. But she’s shaking her head before he even gets the whole question out.

“It’ll be a quick trip. I’ll just go through stuff and hire movers to pack it all up and bring it out here. I’m not worried about it.” It’s a huge oversimplification, but she doesn’t need to drag anybody else into her drama, into her disintegrating marriage.

She’s leaning against her Jeep, nervously turning the keys around on her keychain when she looks up and realizes that Steve is watching her. Seeing through her bullshit. Her shoulders slump, and sawdust falls out of her hair when she runs a hand through it.

“I’ll get some booze,” she promises.

All she gets is an unconvinced half smile, but he lets it go.

“Call me if you need anything,” he says, big hand on her arm as he leans in to press a kiss to her temple. “I’ve been wanting an excuse to visit California. And to beat up your dickhead ex-husband.”

She snorts as she climbs up into the Jeep.

“Not an ex yet.”

“He is in all the ways that matter,” Steve says, shutting her door and thumping it with two gentle taps before walking away, kicking up dust behind him on the way to his big old truck.

\--

She barely pays attention to where she’s going, but she’s not really surprised when she ends up in the Maximoffs’ driveway. The side door opens before she can even knock on it, and Wanda’s there like magic, dressed in a red tanktop and truly destroyed cutoffs, her hair damp and draped in a braid over one shoulder, her face scrubbed clean and soft, but it’s her smile that makes Natasha’s guts knot up, that really punctuate exactly what she’s going to be leaving behind for the next few days.

“Hey!” Wanda says, her voice warm as a sunlit river, and the joy in her eyes is effortless and genuine, all for Natasha. “C’mon in. We made these Cuban empanadas with fake ham that are _so fucking good_ , you’re gonna die. I thought we could take ours up to the tree house and maybe watch--”

“I, um,” Natasha interrupts gently, hands stuffed in her pockets, eyes averted in growing guilt. “Sorry, I just, um.”

Wanda’s smile vanishes, a cloud over the sun. She reaches out and catches Natasha’s arm, tugging on it until she unearths her hand from her pocket and lets her fingers tangle with Wanda’s, their hands swinging slow between them. Natasha hovers on the wooden steps and second guesses every decision she’s made since she was last with this girl.

“What’s going on?” Wanda asks quietly, sparing a glance back in the kitchen before she steps out onto the back patio with Natasha, pulling the door closed behind her. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she waves off, shoulders scrunched up again, making the tight, reddened skin on her shoulders ache. “Yeah, I’m fine. Promise. I just, um. I got a phonecall from Clint today. He wants me to come get all my stuff from the house so he can sell it.”

The mention of him changes Wanda’s face into something shockingly dark, her features settled carefully, mouth tight, eyes narrow. Natasha can see in the failing light that she’s digging her nails into her forearms as she folds them under her breasts.

“Are you gonna go?” she asks, but Natasha can tell she already knows the answer. She sighs and grabs for Wanda’s hand again, pulling it against her chest and stepping in closer while she can, while she’s still here.

“It’ll only be for a few days. And… it’ll be a good thing. Getting my stuff back. At the time, I didn’t want any of it, but now that I’m here and there’s nothing of mine around me, it’s just… I just want to feel home somewhere. You know? I need some of my things. The stuff that I can’t just replace.”

She pauses, covering Wanda’s hand on her chest with a second one of her own. She smirks at her.

“Like a picture of you when you were eleven and were a cheerleader with braces.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Wanda groans, her cheeks flushing as she pushes at Natasha playfully with her caught hand, a reluctant smile escaping and finding Natasha. “Just burn it.”

“Oh, I’ve already ordered a custom frame. It’s going in my bedroom.”

“You can’t go alone,” Wanda rushes out like she can’t help it, and her eyes are so big, so liquid and dark in the muted sunset that Natasha wants to grab her, to leave bruises everywhere she can reach and take a taste of Wanda with her back to California.

“Three days,” she replies, taking a step back, but Wanda follows. “I promise.”

“Two,” Wanda bargains.

“I think you’re vastly underestimating all the stuff I have.”

“I can go. I’ll call my aunt and tell her I need some time off. Mom can pick up the slack with Rose. We’ve got a girl who watches her when one of us can’t be here. It’ll take an hour, tops. And I’m really fast at packing. For real. I do practice runs all the time.”

“I already got my plane ticket,” Natasha says, seeing every minute change in Wanda’s face as it falls. “I promise I’ll be okay. It’ll be fine. I’ll get my stuff and I’ll be back. You’ll barely notice I’m gone.”

“I’ve noticed every single day you were gone since I was thirteen,” Wanda says, so quiet that the cicada song nearly hides it. She’s staring at their hands on Natasha’s chest, at the way their fingers have knotted up together again, like they know no other way to be than clutching each other.

“I’m sorry,” is all Natasha can think to say, all she has tonight. Two steps forward brings her nearly nose to nose with Wanda, smelling her mint sweet breath and her soap. No one in the world would smell like her, even if they had exactly all the same lotions and shampoos and soaps. Natasha wants to know every one, wants to be able to pick out each note like a wine sommelier. Two sips of her sweet girl, and she could wax poetic about every layer of scent. 

“Promise you’ll call,” Wanda mumbles against her mouth, transferring the tangle of their hands to her own chest. Natasha nods, and she wants to give in to this, into the kiss waiting between them, into the comfort Wanda could give her, into the good love of a perfect girl that can heal all aches, but she can’t. 

“My flight leaves at 10am from Asheville. I’ll call you when I land.”

“Before you take off,” Wanda amends.

“Yes’m.” She closes her eyes when Wanda presses a kiss to the side of her mouth and to the tip of her nose, about to pull away when Natasha digs out a hand and grabs her jaw, keeping her still and opening her up so that when they kiss, it’s whole and devouring and honest from the first taste. Her tongue feels raw from being sucked when she gets it back, and her lips are chapped from the sun and swollen from Wanda, and it takes every last bit of strength she’s got to let go of her, to return her hands to her pockets.

“Bye,” she whispers.

The walk back to the car is a lonely one, and she can only bring herself to look at Wanda when she’s buckled in and the engine’s running.

She’s right where Natasha left her, arms wrapped around herself in some cheap imitation of comfort, her eyes unmoving, focused. Natasha backs out of the driveway and onto the quiet, neglected street, faced with a night of laundry and packing and no sleep.

It’s an hour or so later, after she’s gotten out of the shower and started the first load of laundry that she thinks she hears a car in the driveway. She opens the door to a light swarmed by moths and a tupperware dish full of still warm empanadas and a bundle of chocolate oatmeal cookies on top of it.

 _Don’t forget to eat! -W_

The note is wrapped in two little bracelets, one a brown, braided leather with a coin charm dangling from it and another made out of tiny beads to look like a white and yellow daisy chain. She recognizes them immediately, knows they’re from Wanda’s vast collection, that she wears them most every day. 

Natasha puts them on right there in the open doorway, and she curls up in the corner of the couch with her dinner and a cold Stella in front of an early episode of _The Andy Griffith Show_ , spending most of the time typing and deleting texts to Wanda until she finally just sends one.

_i don’t deserve you. not at all. not in a million years. thank you._


End file.
